A/HRC/40/33 over the past decade. Forty-four Member States had still not ratified the Convention, including four members of the Human Rights Council. 42. Mr. Schabas observed that the word “genocide” was used in many ways. When applying the Convention, the term was used and interpreted narrowly, including by judges at international criminal tribunals and the International Court of Justice. In other contexts, the term was used more broadly to include ethnic cleansing and other mass atrocities in order to attract the attention of the international community. However, both the narrow legal approach and the broad approach favoured by activists and journalists – and even by diplomats at times – showed that genocide retained the label given to it in the work of the International Law Commission, and subsequently by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as “the crime of crimes”. 43. Fabián Salvioli, Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, noted that the Human Rights Council was the appropriate forum to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Convention. The best way to do so was, firstly, by feeling and expressing solidarity with the victims and their families. Past victims were still suffering from the effects of genocidal practices and crimes against humanity. Such solidarity had to lead to action by the international community so that those crimes did not go unpunished, societies knew the truth, victims received reparations and the repetition of such events was prevented. 44. Secondly, the international community had to recognize the value of the Convention. While the negotiations had been challenging, the Convention had been approved unanimously by the General Assembly, thus marking an epochal event. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate was closely related to the issue of genocide as, increasingly, when societies had faced the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity, transitional justice mechanisms had been used to move forward. Consequently, the principles and values that had inspired the Convention had to be reflected in the collective processes of memory, truth and effective justice. 45. Thirdly, in order to guarantee non-recurrence, the preventive dimension had to be emphasized, and national, regional and global plans of action for the prevention of genocide and other international crimes had to be developed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly the day after the adoption of the Convention, constituted the most powerful tool of prevention. It recognized the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of all people and gave birth to the most beautiful branch of international law, international human rights law. 46. The Special Rapporteur noted that discrimination lay at the heart of the denial of equality of all persons, and was thus at the origin of flagrant and systematic violations of human rights. The principle of non-discrimination was non-derogable and a peremptory norm. Consequently, States were obliged to respect and guarantee human rights to all people and had a positive duty to act with due diligence to prevent and sanction discrimination by private entities, companies and individuals. 47. The preventive effect of societies in which human rights were fully enjoyed was unmatched. Therefore, respect for and the guarantee of human rights provided the road map for prevention. All public policies of States had to be directed towards achieving full respect for human rights. 48. At the international level, article VIII of the Convention, which had been eliminated during the Convention negotiations and then reintroduced, provided that any Contracting Party could call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they considered appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. That put the responsibility on to the international community. The Special Rapporteur cited a quote from Raphael Lemkin’s autobiography attributed to a diplomatic representative who had participated in the negotiations on the Convention: “It’s just a matter of the right people doing the right thing at the right time”. 49. The Special Rapporteur stated that the international community was obliged to promote the principle of a collective guarantee of human rights. It had to raise its voice clearly and strongly when facing the crime of genocide and other atrocious crimes, no 9