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Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.
Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals. Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law, and like other crimes against international law have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, during the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 152 state parties as of 2022.
International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
An atrocity crime is a violation of international criminal law that falls under the historically three legally defined international crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing is widely regarded as a fourth mass atrocity crime by legal scholars and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field, despite not yet being recognized as an independent crime under international law.
Russian war crimes are violations of international criminal law including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Russia have been accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. These accusations have also been extended to the aiding and abetting of crimes which have been committed by proto-statelets or puppet statelets which are armed and financed by Russia, including the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. These war crimes have included murder, torture, terrorism, deportation and forced transfer, abduction, rape, looting, unlawful confinement, unlawful airstrikes and attacks against civilian objects, used of banned chemical weapons, and wanton destruction.
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets ; indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas ; abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and mistreatment, torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The International Criminal Court investigation in Ukraine or the Situation in Ukraine is an ongoing investigation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) into "any past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person" during the period starting "from 21 November 2013 onwards", on an "open-ended basis", covering the Revolution of Dignity, the Russo-Ukrainian War including the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, the war in Donbas and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The ICC prosecutor commenced these investigations on 2 March 2022, after receiving referrals for the situation in Ukraine from 39 ICC State Parties.
Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is a case brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. It was submitted by Ukraine on 26 February 2022 against Russia following the latter's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which Russia sought to justify in part by claims that Ukraine was engaged in acts of genocide within the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Ukraine said that these claims gave rise to a dispute under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and based its application on the ICJ's jurisdiction to resolve disputes involving the convention. On 16 March 2022, the court ruled that Russia must "immediately suspend the military operations" in Ukraine, while waiting for the final decision on the case.
"On conducting a special military operation" was a televised broadcast by Russian president Vladimir Putin on 24 February 2022, announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine violated international law. The invasion has also been called a crime of aggression under international criminal law, and under some countries' domestic criminal codes – including those of Ukraine and Russia – although procedural obstacles exist to prosecutions under these laws.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry in Ukraine is a United Nations commission of inquiry established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022 with a mandate to investigate violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Commission delivered its reports on 18 October 2022 and 16 March 2023.
The Bucha massacre was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by the Russian Armed Forces during the fight for and occupation of the city of Bucha as part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, national parliaments including those of Poland, Ukraine, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ireland declared that genocide was taking place. Scholars and commentators including Eugene Finkel, Timothy D. Snyder and Gregory Stanton; and legal experts such as Otto Luchterhandt and Zakhar Tropin, have made claims of varying degrees of certainty that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. A comprehensive report by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights concluded that there exists a "very serious risk of genocide" in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
During the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia has forcibly transferred almost 20 thousand Ukrainian children to areas under its control, assigned them Russian citizenship, forcibly adopted them into Russian families, and created obstacles for their reunification with their parents and homeland. The United Nations has stated that these deportations constitute war crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for their alleged involvement. According to international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, such acts constitute genocide if done with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation or ethnic group.
During the build-up to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia falsely accused Ukraine of genocide against Russian speakers in the Donbas region. Ukraine fought a war against Russian proxy forces in the Donbas War from 2014 to 2022. Russia's president Vladimir Putin used this claim of genocide to justify the invasion of Ukraine. There is no evidence to support the allegation and it has been widely rejected.
In July 2022, video recordings of thetorture, castration and murder of a Ukrainian POW in the Pryvilliasanatorium by Russian servicemen were published online. Taking place during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the video caused an international outcry and brought strong condemnation from a number of human rights bodies. Representatives of both Ukraine and the US characterized the event as a war crime.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Russo-Ukrainian War:
References
- ↑ "War crimes have been committed in Ukraine conflict, top UN human rights inquiry reveals | UN News". news.un.org. 2022-09-23. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
- ↑ "Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention" (PDF). United Nations Office of the Prevention of Genocide. 2014.
- ↑ Scharf, Michael; Williams, Paul R.; Dutton, Yvonne; Sterio, Milena (2022-07-29). "High War Crimes Court of Ukraine for Atrocity Crimes in Ukraine". Opinio Juris. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
- ↑ Vasiliev, Sergey (2022-06-17). "The Reckoning for War Crimes in Ukraine Has Begun". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
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