A/HRC/27/24 I. Introduction 1. Pursuant to its resolution 22/22, the Human Rights Council held a high-level panel discussion on 7 March 2014, at its twenty-fifth session, dedicated to the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 2. Baudelaire Ndong Ella, President of the Human Rights Council, chaired the panel discussion. Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Eduard Nalbandian, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, delivered opening statements. The panellists were Esther Mujawayo, a sociologist, author and Rwanda genocide survivor; Adama Dieng, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide; and Jonathan Sisson, Senior Adviser, Task Force for Dealing with the Past (and Prevention of Atrocities), Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.1 3. The present document was prepared pursuant to resolution 22/22 of the Human Rights Council, under which the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is requested to prepare a summary report on the panel discussion. II. Opening statements 4. In her opening remarks, the High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations, in 1948. In order to ensure that it was fully and universally implemented, she encouraged those States that had not yet done so to become parties to that important instrument. She emphasized that the prohibition of genocide was not an ordinary rule of international law but rather jus cogens – a fundamental, overriding principle. Every State had to ensure that its agencies and officials did not commit acts of genocide. Furthermore, States were under the legal obligation to take all measures within their powers to prevent genocide “wherever they may be acting or may be able to act”. That included using all the influence that States could deploy in order to contribute to the prevention of acts of genocide anywhere in the world. 5. With regard to the root causes of genocide, the High Commissioner stressed that genocide and other mass atrocities were never unleashed without warning. They were the culmination of a long period of violations of human rights – whether these be civil, cultural, economic, political or social – that were ignored, giving rise to social divisions, institutional failures and clearly identifiable patterns of systematic discrimination. Referring to her experience as a judge, and then as President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for several years, the High Commissioner said that she had heard witnesses and victims testify that direct and public incitement to commit genocide against Tutsis had permeated gradually through society and had led to the perpetration of other acts of genocide. The process was akin to seeing a pool of petrol forming drop by drop, until a point was reached when a flash of violence set the whole country alight. 6. The High Commissioner stated that discrimination prepared the ground for violence and persecution, the dehumanization of entire communities, and ultimately genocide. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination had identified key factors that may lead to genocide and thus required an immediate response. These included systematic and 1 Owing to unforeseen circumstances, two panellists (Claudia Paz y Paz, Attorney-General of Guatemala, and Youk Chhang, Director, Documentation Centre of Cambodia) were unable to take part in the panel discussion, but contributed via their submission of written papers. 3