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The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries across Europe and atrocities against their citizens in World War II.
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to prosecute individuals for serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, regardless of where the crime was committed and irrespective of the accused's nationality or residence. Rooted in the belief that certain offenses are so heinous that they threaten the international community as a whole, universal jurisdiction holds that such acts are beyond the scope of any single nation's laws. Instead, these crimes are considered to violate norms owed to the global community and fundamental principles of international law, making them prosecutable in any court that invokes this principle.
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 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome, Italy on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of February 2024, 125 states are party to the statute. Among other things, it establishes court function, jurisdiction and structure.
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are legal barriers to trade rather than physical barriers. It is also distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually directed at an entire country or region, rather than a fortress or city and the objective may not always be to conquer the area.
Sir Hersch Lauterpacht was a British international lawyer, human rights activist, and judge at the International Court of Justice.
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.
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 crime of aggression or crime against peace is the planning, initiation, or execution of a large-scale and serious act of aggression using state military force. The definition and scope of the crime is controversial. The Rome Statute contains an exhaustive list of acts of aggression that can give rise to individual criminal responsibility, which include invasion, military occupation, annexation by the use of force, bombardment, and military blockade of ports. In general, committing an act of aggression is a leadership crime that can only be committed by those with the power to shape a state's policy of aggression, as opposed to those who discharge it.
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.
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During the first and second civil conflicts which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), all sides involved in the war actively recruited or conscripted child soldiers, known locally as Kadogos which is a Swahili term meaning "little ones". In 2011 it was estimated that 30,000 children were still operating with armed groups. The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), released a report in 2013 which stated that between 1 January 2012 and August 2013 up to 1,000 children had been recruited by armed groups, and described the recruitment of child soldiers as "endemic".
Complicity in genocide is illegal under international law both for individuals, as part of international criminal law, and state parties to the Genocide Convention. The latter was first held in the Bosnian genocide case (2007) in which the International Court of Justice held Serbia responsible for failure to prevent the Bosnian genocide.
Genocidal intent is the specific mental element, or mens rea, required to classify an act as genocide under international law, particularly the 1948 Genocide Convention. To establish genocide, perpetrators must be shown to have had the dolus specialis, or specific intent, to destroy a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. Unlike broader war crimes or crimes against humanity, genocidal intent necessitates a deliberate aim to eliminate the targeted group rather than merely displace or harm its members.
Jennifer Trahan is an American legal scholar and academic. She is a Clinical Professor at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and directs their Concentration in International Law and Human Rights.
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 moral equality of combatants (MEC) or moral equality of soldiers is the principle that soldiers fighting on both sides of a war are equally honorable, unless they commit war crimes, regardless of whether they fight for a just cause. MEC is a key element underpinning international humanitarian law (IHL)—which applies the rules of war equally to both sides—and traditional just war theory. According to philosopher Henrik Syse, MEC presents a serious quandary because "it makes as little practical sense to ascribe blame to individual soldiers for the cause of the war in which they fight as it makes theoretical sense to hold the fighters on the two sides to be fully morally equal". The moral equality of combatants has been cited in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict or the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Selective conscientious objection is the practice of refusing some, but not all, military service. It is much more controversial than blanket conscientious objection based on consistent pacifism. Views on selective conscientious objection range from being morally impermissible, morally permissible, a right that may be exercised, or morally obligatory in the case of military personnel asked to fight an illegal war of aggression.
Universal jurisdiction investigations of war crimes in Ukraine are investigations of war crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine carried out under the legal systems of individual states under the universal jurisdiction principle of international humanitarian law. States that started investigations included Germany, Lithuania, Spain and Sweden.
Starvation of a civilian population is a war crime, a crime against humanity, or an act of genocide according to modern international criminal law. Starvation has not always been illegal according to international law; the starvation of civilians during the siege of Leningrad was ruled to be not criminal by a United States military court, and the 1949 Geneva Convention, though imposing limits, "accepted the legality of starvation as a weapon of war in principle". Historically, the development of laws against starvation has been hampered by the Western powers who wish to use blockades against their enemies; however, it was banned in the 1977 by Protocol I and Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions and criminalized by the Rome Statute. Prosecutions for starvation have been rare.
References
- ↑ "Tom Dannenbaum". fletcher.tufts.edu. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
- ↑ Svoboda, Emma (2023). "Empty Promises: Peacekeeper Babies and Discretionary Impunity within the United Nations". Harvard International Law Journal. 64: 1.
- ↑ Kersten, Mark (2023). "'Global South' Voices Are Muted in Debates over the Crime of Aggression: What Three Books on Illegal War Tell Us About Why". International Journal of Transitional Justice. 17 (1): 173–182. doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijac028.
- ↑ Lieblich, Eliav (2019). "The Crime of Aggression, Humanity, and the Soldier. By Tom Dannenbaum. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xxvii, 352. Index". American Journal of International Law. 113 (3): 664–669. doi: 10.1017/ajil.2019.21 .
- ↑ Gravel, Amélie (2020). "Tom Dannenbaum, The Crime of Aggression, Humanity, and the Soldier, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018". Revue québécoise de droit international / Quebec Journal of International Law / Revista quebequense de derecho internacional (in French). 33 (1): 155–158. doi: 10.7202/1079910ar . ISSN 0828-9999.
- ↑ Sayapin, Sergey (2022). "The Crime of Aggression, Humanity, and the Soldier". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 19 (4): 1031–1034. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqab057.
