Beginning in 2013, the month of April is designated as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month in recognition of the state's desire to combat all acts of genocide and all human rights atrocities. Following the Holocaust, on December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 260 (III) A, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, declaring genocide to be a crime under international law, and defining genocide to include the commission of certain acts, including killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group's physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group, and forcibly transferring children of a group to another group, with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The state declares that in order to educate the public and help prevent future genocides, the governor may promote and encourage the observance of Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.
History:2013 c 26 s 1