Editing Genocide (section)

=== Development ===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1983-0422-315, Umsiedler auf dem Güterbahnhof Berlin-Pankow.jpg|thumb|The [[expulsion of Germans]] was one of the instances of [[state violence]] that was deliberately written out of the legal definition of genocide.{{sfn|Weiss-Wendt|2017|pp=267–268}}]]
According to the [[Nuremberg Charter|legal instrument]] used to prosecute defeated German leaders at the [[International Military Tribunal]] at Nuremberg, [[atrocity crimes]] were only prosecutable by international justice if they were committed as part of an [[crime of aggression|illegal war of aggression]]. The powers prosecuting the trial were unwilling to restrict a government's actions against its own citizens.{{sfn|Irvin-Erickson|2023|p=20}}

In order to criminalize peacetime genocide, Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established [[United Nations]] in 1946.{{sfn |Irvin-Erickson |2023|p=20}} Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to states' concerns that it would lead their own policies—including treatment of [[indigenous peoples]], [[European colonialism]], [[racial segregation in the United States]], and [[Soviet nationalities policy]]—to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their [[Cold War|geopolitical rivals]]' actions but not their own.{{sfn|Irvin-Erickson|2023|pp=20–21}} Few formerly colonized countries were represented and "most states had no interest in empowering their victims– past, present, and future".{{sfn|Bachman|2021b|p=1021}}

The result severely diluted Lemkin's original concept;{{sfn|Curthoys|Docker|2008|pp=13–14}} he privately considered it a failure.{{sfn|Irvin-Erickson|2023|pp=20–21}} Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one that favored colonial powers.{{sfn|Irvin-Erickson|2023|p=22}}{{sfn|Bachman|2021b|p=1020}} Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide was the destruction of political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking.{{sfn|Weiss-Wendt|2017|p=4}}{{sfn|Bachman|2022|p=53}}{{sfn|Curthoys|Docker|2008|pp=13–14}} Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out.{{sfn|Irvin-Erickson|2023|p=8}} Additionally omitted was [[ethnic cleansing|the forced migration of populations]]—which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, [[expulsion of Germans|against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe]].{{sfn|Weiss-Wendt|2017|pp=267–268, 283}}