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Mandate
The Committee on Conscience mandate is to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity.
In carrying out its mandate, the Committee uses a wide range of actions, including public programs and activities, temporary exhibitions and public or private communications with policy makers. It seeks to work whenever possible with other governmental and non-governmental organizations.
The Holocaust Memorial Council directed the Committee on Conscience to base its work on the definition of genocide found in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by the United Nations in 1948 and ratified by the United States in 1988:
[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Most countries in the world, including the United States, are parties to the Convention, obligating themselves to "undertake to prevent and to punish" the crime of genocide.
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