Genocide is, first and foremost, a legal concept. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted in Paris, on 9 December 1948, at the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. It entered into force on 12 January 1951, after obtaining the requisite twenty ratifications.

Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In Article 1 it confirms that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which the Contracting Parties undertake “to prevent and to punish”. It is above all the responsibility of the state in which the genocide has been committed to prevent and put an end to this crime.

Interest in the Convention and in the legal aspects of genocide has grown dramatically in the
past ten years, a part of the proliferation of activity in the field of international criminal law. There have been more important judicial pronouncements on genocide in the past five years than in the previous fifty-five. 
  

 
To prevent genocide and genocidal conflicts it is imperative to understand the root causes. While non-genocidal conflicts are caused by many different factors, the primary determining factor in genocidal conflict is identity. The risk of genocide and other related atrocities arises in situations where different national, racial, ethnic or religious groups confront each other on the question of identity. It rarely stems from the real or perceived differences between groups but rather from the resulting inequalities, such as exclusion from power sharing, wealth and income, services, property, employment, the process of development, citizenship, or the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms.

The flames of genocide are fanned by discrimination, hate mongering, incitement to violence, and human rights violations.Preventing it imperatively requires identifying the forms of discrimination that in a given situation lead to fundamentally unequal treatment of different population groups, and then taking the necessary steps to neutralize these “triggers” and ultimately to eliminate them altogether. Since there are no countries whose societies are truly homogeneous, genocide is in fact a potential problem on a worldwide scale. 
 

 
Switzerland has been committed to the prevention of genocide for a number of years. In particular:

• Switzerland works with the Special Advisers to Ban Ki-moon: Francis Deng and Edward Luck of the United Nations Office for the Prevention of Genocide. 
   
• It supports and cooperates with the programme: “Engaging Governments in Genocide Prevention” of George Mason University, which aims to promote new initiatives in this field such as the “Regional Initiative for the Prevention and Curbing of War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, the Crime of Genocide and the Fight against Impunity in the Great Lakes Region and for the POLITORBIS-magazine. 
   
• Switzerland hosts and supports the Genocide Prevention Advisory Group.
   
• It conducts, with the support of Tanzania and Argentina, a series of regional forums on the prevention of genocide in an effort to make governments aware of the need to prevent mass atrocities and strengthen their early warning, intervention and rapid-response capacities so as to prevent such human catastrophes in good time and with lasting effect.
   
• When instances of genocide have occurred, Switzerland has played a very active part in efforts to combat impunity, promote the rule of law, and begin the process of rehabilitation in affected societies through its activities in the area of dealing with the past.