The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy – is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect.
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.
Rape can be categorized in different ways: for example, by reference to the situation in which it occurs, by the identity or characteristics of the victim, and by the identity or characteristics of the perpetrator. These categories are referred to as types of rape. The types described below are not mutually exclusive: a given rape can fit into multiple categories, by for example being both a prison rape and a gang rape, or both a custodial rape and the rape of a child.
The Martens Clause is an early international law concept first introduced into the preamble of the 1899 Hague Convention II – Laws and Customs of War on Land. There are differing interpretations of its significance on modern international law, with some scholars simply treating the clause as a reminder international customary law still applies after a treaty is ratified while others take a more expansive approach where the clause provides that because international treaties cannot be all encompassing, states cannot use that as a justification for an action.
United Nations Security Council resolution 798, adopted unanimously on 18 December 1992, after reaffirming 770 (1992) and 771 (1992) and supporting an initiative by the European Council.The Council condemned reports of the massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women, in particular Muslim women, in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.
United Nations Security Council resolution 808, adopted unanimously on 22 February 1993, after reaffirming Resolution 713 (1991) and subsequent resolutions on the situation in former Yugoslavia, including resolutions 764 (1992), 771 (1992) and 780 (1992), the council, after stating its determination to put an end to crimes such as ethnic cleansing and other violations of international humanitarian law, decided that an international tribunal should be established for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in former Yugoslavia since 1991. This later became known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
United Nations Security Council resolution 827, adopted unanimously on 25 May 1993, after reaffirming Resolution 713 (1991) and all subsequent resolutions on the topic of the former Yugoslavia, approved report S/25704 of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, with the Statute of the International Tribunal as an annex, establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Military brothels were set up by Nazi Germany during World War II throughout much of occupied Europe for the use of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers. These brothels were generally new creations, but in the west, they were sometimes expansions of pre-existing brothels and other buildings. Until 1942, there were around 500 military brothels of this kind in German-occupied Europe, serving travelling soldiers and those withdrawn from the front. According to records, a minimum of 34,140 European women were forced to serve as prostitutes during the German occupation of their own countries along with female prisoners of concentration camp brothels. In many cases in Eastern Europe, teenage girls and women were kidnapped on the streets of occupied cities during German military and police round ups called łapanka in Polish or rafle in French.
United Nations Security Council resolution 935, adopted unanimously on 1 July 1994, after recalling all resolutions on Rwanda, particularly 918 (1994) and 925 (1994), the Council requested the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to establish a Commission of Experts to investigate violations of international humanitarian law during the Rwandan genocide.
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).
Shabtai Rosenne was a Professor of International Law and an Israeli diplomat. Rosenne was awarded the 1960 Israel Prize for Jurisprudence, the 1999 Manley O. Hudson Medal for International Law and Jurisprudence, the 2004 Hague Prize for International Law and the 2007 Distinguished Onassis Scholar Award. He was the leading scholar of the World Court - the PCIJ and ICJ and had a widely recognized expertise in treaty law, state responsibility, self-defence, UNCLOS and other issues of international law.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1165, adopted unanimously on 30 April 1998, after recalling Resolution 955 (1994), the council established a third trial chamber at 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.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1503, adopted unanimously on 28 August 2003, after recalling resolutions 827 (1993), 955 (1994), 978 (1995), 1165 (1998), 1166 (1998), 1329 (2000), 1411 (2002), 1431 (2002) and 1481 (2003), the Council decided to split the prosecutorial duties of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) which had previously been under the responsibility of one official, Carla Del Ponte, since 1999.
Yayori Matsui was a Japanese journalist and women's rights activist noted for her work to raise awareness of sex slaves and sex tourism in post-war Asia. In 1961 she began work as a journalist for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, retiring in 1994 to work as a full-time social activist, founding numerous women's organizations and writing on gender inequality in Japan and on sex crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, namely against the comfort women of the Second World War. Her work culminated in the 2000 Tokyo Women's War Crimes Tribunal, a tribunal held to gain some form of justice for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery.
Prosecution of gender-targeted crimes is the legal proceedings to prosecute crimes such as rape and domestic violence. The earliest documented prosecution of gender-based/targeted crimes is from 1474 when Sir Peter von Hagenbach was convicted for rapes committed by his troops. However, the trial was only successful in indicting Sir von Hagenbach with the charge of rape because the war in which the rapes occurred was "undeclared" and thus the rapes were considered illegal only because of this. Gender-targeted crimes continued to be prosecuted, but it was not until after World War II when an international criminal tribunal – the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – were officers charged for being responsible of the gender-targeted crimes and other crimes against humanity. Despite the various rape charges, the Charter of the Tokyo Tribunal did not make references to rape, and rape was considered as subordinate to other war crimes. This is also the situation for other tribunals that followed, but with the establishments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), there was more attention to the prosecution of gender-targeted crimes with each of the statutes explicitly referring to rape and other forms of gender-targeted violence.
Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocidal campaign. During the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the second Sino-Japanese war, the Holocaust, the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Bosnian War, the Rwandan genocide, the Tamil genocide, the Circassian genocide, the Congolese conflicts, the South Sudanese Civil War, the Yazidi Genocide, and Rohingya genocide, mass rapes that had been an integral part of those conflicts brought the concept of genocidal rape to international prominence. Although war rape has been a recurrent feature in conflicts throughout human history, it has usually been looked upon as a by-product of conflict and not an integral part of military policy.
Segun Jegede is an international lawyer from Nigeria who has practiced law for over three decades at domestic and international level. A prolific writer and author, Jegede's career highlights comprise his extensive work of over 13 years at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR), and advocacy work in international criminal law through the Legal Watch and Human Rights Initiative, a registered non-profit organization he co-founded. His work at the UNICTR mainly revolved around the investigation and prosecution of some of the known masterminds of the egregious crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide. His perspectives of the historical events which led to the Rwandan genocide and the ground breaking case law generated by the UNICTR established to prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for the genocide are documented in his book, “The Rwandan Genocide: Historical Background and Jurisprudence”. In the book, Jegede provides a riveting account of the pre-genocide history of Rwanda, including the often overlooked elements that make the Rwandan genocide one of the worst human tragedies of our time. Through the cases, in an engaging and candid style, the Author reveals several ground breaking decisions of the UNICTR such as the pronouncement of rape as genocide and the conviction of a woman for rape as a crime against humanity. Jegede serves as a consultant for the International Labour Organization (ILO) on human trafficking issues and the National Human Rights Commission.
The Kijani killings refers to the mass murder of elderly Serb civilians from the village of Kijani near the town of Gračac by members of the Croatian Army (HV) during and following Operation Storm.
The tu quoque defense asserts that the authority trying a defendant has committed the same crimes of which they are accused. It is related to the legal principle of clean hands, reprisal, and "an eye for an eye". The tu quoque defense does not exist in international criminal law and has never been accepted by an international court.
