07.02.2025


An article by Edita Gzoyan, Director and Senior Researcher at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI), titled "From War Crimes to Crimes against Humanity and Genocide: Turkish Responsibility after World War I," has been published in Genocide Studies International: https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/GSI-2022-0020.

The article examines the work of the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and Enforcement of Penalties, established after World War I to investigate war crimes, including those committed against Armenians during the Armenian Genocide.

Drawing on evidence from various sources, the Commission’s report explicitly identifies the crimes perpetrated by the Young Turk government against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, namely:

1. Mass killings, massacres, and systematic terror.
2. Abduction of women and young girls.
3. Deportation of civilians.

For the first time in international criminal law, these crimes were classified as crimes against humanity, which were later defined as a crime of genocide by Raphael Lemkin.

The Commission also proposed the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the Young Turk perpetrators, marking one of the earliest calls for international justice in response to the Armenian Genocide and crimes of this scale in general.