Human rights lawyer Norman Tjombe says international law and the right to justice for historical genocide are central to Namibia’s Genocide Remembrance Day, although he notes that the 1948 UN Genocide Convention is technically not retroactive and does not cover the 1904-1908 genocide against the Herero and Nama.

Tjombe explained that the Genocide Convention, enacted after the Holocaust, does not formally apply to the atrocities committed under German colonial rule. This position, he said, is the stance Germany uses to argue that the Convention does not oblige it to treat the Ovaherero and Nama genocide the same way it treats the Holocaust. 

However, Tjombe rejected that narrow legal interpretation, pointing out that the Convention was applied to the Jewish Holocaust even though it was enacted after the crime. He said human rights are inherent and not granted by laws, pointing out that the victims of the 1904-1908 genocide were human beings then, just as people are now, and justice must apply to them regardless of when the crime occurred.

He also noted that the real reason the Convention is not applied equally is geopolitics and race, noting that the victims are Black people who are not seen as human enough to be afforded the protections of the Convention.