Timeline of 20th & 21st Century Events Associated with Genocide

Conventions and Covenants

1948

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

1948

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

From Article 2 of the U.N. Convention, genocide toward national, racial, ethnic, or religious groups can involve:

• Killing of a group's members
• Infliction of mass injuries and/or mental harm
• Creating conditions calculated to bring physical destruction
• Measures preventing a group's births
• Forcible transfer of children to another group

1966-1968

International covenants on racial discrimination and women's, refugees', political/civil rights

1986-1990

International conventions on Africans', indigenous peoples', children's, migrant workers' rights

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Timeline of Key Events (20th and 21st centuries)

1904-1908

Herero and Nama massacres

1909

Ottoman Massacre against Adana Armenians

1915-1923

Armenian Genocide (related: genocide of Pontic Greeks and Assyrians)

1919

League of Nations founded

1921

Assassination of Armenian Genocide perpetrator-in-chief Talaat in Berlin (Operation Nemesis)

1926

Last mass killing of Aborigines in Australia

1932-1933

Holodomor, Ukraine forced famine

1933

Raphael Lemkin's conceptualization of the term genocide

1933

Simele Massacre against Syriac Christians (Assyrians)

1937

"Rape of Nanking" (China)

1933-1945

Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler

1941-1945

Holocaust/Shoah

1945

United Nations is founded

1945

International Court of Justice (ICJ) is founded

1945-1946

Nuremberg Tribunal

1948

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

1950s-1970s

Ache Indians genocide, Paraguay

1958-1976

China's "Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution," forced famine

1959

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is created

1960-1996

Guatemalan civil war and "scorched earth" policy

1971

East Pakistan massacres

1972

Ikiza, Burundi massacres

1975-1979

Cambodian genocide

1976-1978

Ethiopia's "Red Terror"

1982-1983

Matabeleland massacres, Zimbabwe

1986-1989

Anfal Campaign and Kurdish genocide

1988

US Ratification of Genocide Convention

1991

Santa Cruz, East Timor massacre

1992-1995

Bosnian War and Srebrenica genocide

1994

Rwandan genocide

1995

International Crisis Group (ICG) founded

1997-2006

Cultural Genocide in Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan

1998

First ever genocide conviction, Rwanda

1999

Rigoberta Menchu files charges of genocide against Gen. Rios Montt, Guatemala

2002

International Criminal Court (ICC) founded

2003-2013

Darfur genocide and displacements

2007

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

2009

ICC charges Sudan's Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and genocide

2014

Yazidi, Iraq genocide

2014

Colorado Governor apologizes for 1864 Sand Creek Massacre

2017-2019

Rohingya massacres and ethnic cleansing

2017-present

Uyghur ethnic cleansing and forced displacement

2018

Two Khmer Rouge leaders convicted of Cambodian genocide

2013-present

South Sudan massacres

2020-present

Tigray, Ethiopia massacres

2021

The United States recognizes the Armenian Genocide

2021

Germany recognizes its own genocide against Herero and Nama people