The present research is aimed to examine how and to what extent the lexical, semantic, stylistic and functional peculiarities of the text of R. Lemkin’s Draft Convention on the Crime of Genocide (the Secretariat Draft) have been reflected in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The texts of the mentioned documents have been treated as samples of genocide discourse. The comparative linguistic study, ranging from general overviews and theoretical reflections to this particular case, reveals a wide scope of pragmatic and cognitive problems related to the question of the linguistic expression of official censure on one of the most vicious crimes against mankind – genocide.