A/HRC/27/24 including the Genocide Convention, should be evaluated on the basis of its implementation. Therefore, in order to ensure maximum effectiveness of the Genocide Convention, he called upon States that had not yet acceded to it to sign and ratify the Convention. III. Contributions of the panel 16. Esther Mujawayo began her remarks by observing that April 2014 marked 20 years since the Rwandan genocide, which had started on an Easter Sunday. In a moving testimony, Ms. Mujawayo recalled the events leading up to the genocide, saying that tensions were felt months before it occurred, with radio stations playing catchy songs that called for the extermination of the Tutsis. On 7 April 1994, the killings of the Tutsis started on a mass scale and every place was dangerous. 17. Ms. Mujawayo held up a photo of her extended family to show the audience that everyone in the photo had been killed – except for herself and her niece. She asked the audience whether it was really possible for anyone to survive if that person had already lost everyone close to her. Ms. Mujawayo said that she had lived in a vacuum since, because although she had survived, she no longer felt alive. She said that she suffered from survivor’s guilt, made worse because she had not been able to bury the bodies of her loved ones. She added that the genocide had led to the killing of men, women and children, and indicated a loss of all societal values. Even churches and other traditional sanctuaries had become slaughterhouses. To have been able to kill one million people in 100 days meant that everyone in Rwanda had to have been involved. Rwandan society had been completely blown apart, and everything had changed. Ms. Mujawayo reminded the audience that the genocide had taken place 45 years after the Convention had entered into force. She ended her remarks by asking the Council what was being done to restore justice. 18. The Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide stressed how unfortunate it was that, 65 years after the adoption of the Genocide Convention, the international community still had to reaffirm the Convention’s importance. He noted that the Holocaust had been a horrific, unique experience, but that it had only been an extreme version of what populations had repeatedly suffered before the twentieth century and would continue to suffer. Referring to current ethnic and religious tensions and the extreme forms of identitybased violence taking place in various regions of the world, he noted that there was a dangerous increase in the number of situations meriting the urgent attention of the international community. 19. The Special Adviser recalled that the Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty of the United Nations, which spoke to its significance. In addition to setting out norms relating to the punishment of the crime of genocide, one of the most important contributions of the Convention was that it had also established the responsibility to prevent genocide. He emphasized that preventing genocide did not mean responding when the crime was already unfolding. If genocide was already under way, the international community had failed to meet its obligation and responsibility under the Convention to prevent it. He stressed that the responsibility to prevent genocide fell to all actors, including regional organizations, States, international organizations, civil society and individuals. 20. With regard to the role of the United Nations, the Special Adviser emphasized that “lessons learned” exercises after the failure to prevent or halt the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica had focused on improving the mechanisms for preventing genocide and other atrocity crimes. The inquiry reports into those two cases had generated a number of decisions at different levels. He recalled that the Secretary-General of the United Nations had presented his Action Plan to Prevent Genocide in 2004 and had appointed a Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to act as an early warning mechanism. 6