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The United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 60/7 of 2005, designated 27 January as the annual International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, also known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this day, through educational and programmatic efforts aimed at preventing future acts of genocide, we honour the memory of the 6 million Jews and members of other minority groups who fell victim to genocide and other atrocity crimes at the hands of the Nazi regime. In addition, the resolution encourages States to recommit to protecting and promoting human rights, including by preventing identity-based discrimination and violence. At its heart, Holocaust Remembrance Day represents the international community¡¯s continuing commitment to ensuring the dignity and human rights of all minorities within the borders of every State.

Such commitments ring hollow, however, if States selectively determine which perpetrators of international crimes to condemn and which minority groups are deserving of human rights protections and dignity. For instance, while it was essential to recognize the enslaved Jews as victims of the Nazi concentration camps, it is equally essential to acknowledge that the so-called ¡°comfort women¡± were victims of slavery crimes during the Second World War.

Today, attacks on the rule of law and on the individuals and international institutions that protect and promote human rights threaten to undermine real progress, especially when human rights obligations are enforced against powerful perpetrators. We see these attacks in real time against the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and individuals who support the efforts of the Office of the Prosecutor to hold perpetrators of international crimes accountable. The human rights and atrocity prevention project, while critical to global peace and security, needs sustained investment and political support at the local, regional and international levels to attain even its most conservative goals and to avert backsliding when progress is achieved.

Holocaust and genocide studies have exposed the way that victims can perpetrate harms, and that perpetrators can also be victims of international crimes. Today, genocidal and other atrocity violence occurs in all corners of the globe, largely unabated and with near-total impunity. Even in places that do not make headlines, individuals and communities are targeted for identity-based discrimination and violence, often fighting for their rights to exist and continue as peoples. Accountability, justice and transformative change for identity-based violence are the exceptions rather than the rules in most contexts globally.

The atrocities of the Holocaust teach us that State and non-State actors alike use and abuse the law to encourage discrimination, promote violence and justify a range of crimes. The international community must continue to challenge those who would pursue similar paths today, including those who would intentionally discriminate against groups and commit mass atrocities and genocide in the service of extremist populism and nationalism.

Moreover, the international community must begin to connect unlawful land grabs, corporate exploitation and environmental destruction to crimes against humanity and genocide. For far too long, the law has prioritized corporate interests over people¡¯s basic needs. Indeed, international human rights responses can no longer ignore the interconnectedness and interdependence of corporate and State action, of all of us human beings with one another, and of humanity with our planet.

A positive development that brings me hope for a more peaceful and humane world, one that represents an effort towards preventing and responding to atrocity crimes like those perpetrated during the Holocaust, is the decision by the General Assembly, in of 22 November 2024, to move forward with negotiations on an international convention for the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. In the wake of the Second World War, allied powers included crimes against humanity, along with crimes against peace and war crimes, in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal against the German Nazi regime leadership. In 1946, the General Assembly endorsed crimes against humanity as part of the . And, while States adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, no crimes against humanity treaty followed. Thus, a standalone treaty is a long-overdue addition towards completing the international legal architecture to prevent and punish international crimes against humanity.

While the draft treaty in its current form largely replicates the enumeration of crimes against humanity included in , important advocacy towards the progressive development of international law and State responsibility for international crimes proposes to include, inter alia, the slave trade, forced marriage and gender apartheid as crimes against humanity under the treaty. In addition, civil society advocates have organized to ensure the inclusion of trauma-informed, survivor-centred approaches that are intersectional and inclusive of all identity groups.

Faith in the international legal architecture to adequately respond to conflicts and atrocities raging in Afghanistan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Myanmar, the Sudan and Ukraine¡ªlet alone to address less visible mass harms in all societies¡ªmay still seem to be a utopian pipedream. Peaceful societies free from identity-based mass violence may remain out of reach 80 years from the time the world proclaimed: ¡°Never again!¡± in the context of continued perpetration of international crimes. The lessons from the Holocaust and present international crimes perpetration across the globe must be acknowledged and understood if we are to develop solutions that will help build a world free of identity-based discrimination and violence, a world where all people are free to survive and thrive with dignity.