<Ul> <Li> Australia </Li> <Li> Belgium </Li> <Li> Brazil </Li> <Li> Ecuador </Li> <Li> China </Li> <Li> Netherlands </Li> <Li> Sri Lanka </Li> <Li> United Kingdom </Li> </Ul> <P> The first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on 2 September 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean - Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide . The lead prosecutor in this case was Pierre - Richard Prosper . Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide . </P> <P> The first state to be found in breach of the Genocide convention was Serbia . In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on 26 February 2007 . It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war, but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladić . </P> <P> One of the first accusations of genocide submitted to the UN after the Convention entered into force concerned treatment of Black Americans . The Civil Rights Congress drafted a 237 - page petition arguing that even after 1945, the United States had been responsible for hundreds of wrongful deaths, both legal and extra-legal, as well as numerous other genocidal abuses . Leaders from the Black community, including William Patterson, Paul Robeson, and W.E.B. DuBois presented this petition to the UN in December 1951 . However, this accusation was a domestic political act by the Civil Rights Congress, without any reservations that a formal charge would be levied against the U.S. </P>

Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocid