The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first human rights treaty to be adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. By a unanimous resolution on 9 December 1948, the Assembly approved the text that had been negotiated over the previous 2 years, opening the Convention for signature. On the same day, it also adopted a companion resolution mandating the creation of an international criminal court, giving effect to the reference to such an institution in Article 6 of the Convention itself. But within a few years, international criminal law had gone into virtual hibernation from which it was not to emerge for more than four decades.