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Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands.
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic criminal acts which are committed by or on behalf of a de facto authority, usually by or on behalf of a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the context of wars, and they apply to widespread practices rather than acts which are committed by individuals. Although crimes against humanity apply to acts which are committed by or on behalf of authorities, they do not need to be part of an official policy, and they only need to be tolerated by authorities. The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place during the Nuremberg trials. Initially considered for legal use, widely in international law, following the Holocaust, a global standard of human rights was articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Political groups or states that violate or incite violations of human rights norms, as they are listed in the Declaration, are expressions of the political pathologies which are associated with crimes against humanity.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to judge people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994. The court eventually convicted 61 individuals and acquitted 14.
A peremptory norm is a fundamental principle of international law that is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is permitted.
The Bosnian genocide refers to either the Srebrenica massacre or the wider crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladić.
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.
The Trnopolje camp was an internment camp established by Bosnian Serb military and police authorities in the village of Trnopolje near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the first months of the Bosnian War. Also variously termed a concentration camp, detainment camp, detention camp, prison, and ghetto, Trnopolje held between 4,000 and 7,000 Bosniak and Bosnian Croat inmates at any one time and served as a staging area for mass deportations, mainly of women, children, and elderly men. Between May and November 1992, an estimated 30,000 inmates passed through. Mistreatment was widespread and there were numerous instances of torture, rape, and killing; ninety inmates died.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
A war crimes trial is the trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law committed during armed conflict.
Joint criminal enterprise (JCE) is a legal doctrine used during war crimes tribunals to allow the prosecution of members of a group for the actions of the group. This doctrine considers each member of an organized group individually responsible for crimes committed by group within the common plan or purpose. It arose through the application of the idea of common purpose and has been applied by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav Wars 1991–1999.
Rape during the Bosnian War was a policy of mass systemic violence targeted against women. While men from all ethnic groups committed rape, the vast majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used rape as an instrument of terror and key tactics as part of their programme of ethnic cleansing. Estimates of the number of women raped during the war range between 10,000 and 50,000. Accurate numbers are difficult to establish and it is believed that the number of unreported cases is much higher than reported ones.
William Anthony Schabas, OC is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law. He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty. Schabas has been described as "the world expert on the law of genocide and international law."
O-Gon Kwon is a noted international South Korean judge, best known for being one of the three judges in the trial of Slobodan Milošević. He also sat on the bench for the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić.
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.
United Nations Security Council resolution 955, adopted on 8 November 1994, after recalling all resolutions on Rwanda, the Council noted that serious violations of international humanitarian law had taken place in the country and, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
United Nations Security Council resolution 1329, adopted unanimously on 30 November 2000, after recalling resolutions 827 (1993) and 955 (1994), the Council enlarged the appeals chambers at both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), proposed the election of two additional judges at the ICTR and established a pool of ad litem judges at the ICTY.
The Doboj ethnic cleansing refers to war crimes, including murder, deportation, persecution and wanton destruction, committed against Bosniaks and Croats in the Doboj area by the Yugoslav People's Army and Serb paramilitary units from May until September 1992 during the Bosnian war. On 26 September 1997, Serb soldier Nikola Jorgić was found guilty by the Düsseldorf Oberlandesgericht on 11 counts of genocide involving the murder of 30 persons in the Doboj region, making it the first Bosnian Genocide prosecution. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) classified it as a crime against humanity and sentenced seven Serb officials.
Flavia Lattanzi is an Italian lawyer specialized in international law who is ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 2007 and professor at the Roma Tre University. Between 2003 and 2007, she served as ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
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.
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Jennifer Trahan". www.sps.nyu.edu.
- 1 2 Trahan, Jennifer (February 4, 2020). Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108765251. ISBN 9781108765251. S2CID 225390705.
- 1 2 "Announcing the Winner of the Inaugural Book Award". October 25, 2020.
- 1 2 "Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity" (PDF).
- 1 2 "Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: A Topical Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia". www.hrw.org.
- ↑ "ABILA Leadership - American Branch of the International Law Association".
- ↑ "Obituary: Elizabeth Trahan, former German instructor". Office of News & Media Relations | UMass Amherst.
- ↑ "Donald Trahan Obituary (2014) - Monterey Herald". www.legacy.com.
- ↑ "Jennifer Trahan - ResearchGate".
- ↑ Trahan, Jennifer (January 1, 2011). "The Rome Statute's Amendment on the Crime of Aggression: Negotiations at the Kampala Review Conference". International Criminal Law Review. 11 (1): 49–104. doi:10.1163/157181211X543920 – via brill.com.
- ↑ Trahan, Jennifer (January 2, 2015). "Defining the 'grey area' where humanitarian intervention may not be fully legal, but is not the crime of aggression". Journal on the Use of Force and International Law. 2 (1): 42–80. doi:10.1080/20531702.2015.1042286. S2CID 142725799 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.
- ↑ "From Kampala to New York—The Final Negotiations to Activate the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over the Crime of Aggression".
- ↑ Trahan, Jennifer (July 1, 2019). "Revisiting the Role of the Security Council Concerning the International Criminal Court's Crime of Aggression". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 17 (3): 471–483. doi: 10.1093/jicj/mqz022 – via academic.oup.com.
- ↑ "https://www.vetoesinitiative.com/"
- ↑ "Legal Limits to the Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes". International Center for Transitional Justice. April 11, 2019.