Holocaust remembrance: a resolution unfolds--the world remembers.

• Author: Talwar, Namrita

The sixtieth session of the General Assembly saw the unanimous backing of a resolution that marks 27 January--the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp--as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

It was in the spring of 2005 when Israel laid the foundation of its first-ever draft text before the Assembly. "We had thought of it [resolution] for sometime, but put it in practice for Member States in 2005", Daniel Carmon, Deputy Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, told the UN Chronicle.

The resolution also comes at a time when the world marks the sixtieth year of the establishment of the United Nations and the end of the Holocaust tragedy, which resulted in the annihilation of 6 million European Jews by the Nazi regime. The essence of the text lies in its "two-fold approach", Ambassador Carmon added: one that deals with the memory and remembrance of those who were massacred during the Holocaust, and the other with educating future generations of its horrors.

After its initial drafting, the text was then negotiated over private deliberations with certain Member States, "who were the initiators of the special session in January and were also the liberators of Nazi camps in the Second World War", Mr. Carmon said. With some linguistic tweaking and a strong endorsement from the United States, Canada, Australia, the Russian Federation and the European Union, the text embarked as a new agenda item in the General Assembly.

Even though a strong support from 104 sponsors implied that the resolution would glide through, Mr. Carmon said that many had concerns whether the rest of the delegations would join hands on this issue. The idea was to encompass all Member States in this endeavour, and many were skeptical of its outcome, given that "the story of Israel and the United Nations" as "very complex", he said.

However, initial fears turned to optimism when on 1 November 2005 the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to mark the memory of the Holocaust victims. The adoption came effortlessly as many delegates upheld the general thrust of the draft. Yet, with the debate stretching over two days and had delegations expressing support for the historic text, there were calls for its scope to be expanded beyond the specific events surrounding the Holocaust--to incorporate not only the lessons of that tragedy but also other war crimes, acts of genocide or ethnic...