On 9 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. The Genocide Convention was intended to prevent and prosecute genocide.
As a result, genocide was added as a crime to international law. It is defined as: 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'.
The term genocide was coined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. He invented the word to describe the crimes of the Nazis during the war. To Lemkin, the adoption of the Genocide Convention was a personal matter as well. The larger part of his family had been murdered by the Nazis during the war.