International Crimes and Justice

This contribution is written following the death of Slob0dan Milosovic and the impending arrest and trial of Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone for possible transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) of Justice at the Hague ? This triggered thoughts about International Law, the policing of that law and the system of International Justice.

First a review of the conventions and tribunals since the end of World War Two : -

1948 The UN General Assembly set up the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. Is this victors justice ?

1949 Geneva Conventions on War Crimes

1993 The UN set up an International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia (ICTY)

1994 The UN set up a similar Tribunal for Rwanda

1998 The Rome Statute of the ICC was adopted at a meeting of 160 countries, this recognized that the Security Council of the UN and the ICC will continue to complement each other in the maintenance of international peace and security. There was a deadline of 31.12.2000 for states to sign-up.

2000 In all some 139 states signed up ( out of 160 ) including the USA under President Clinton.

2002 Then President Bush informed the UN that the USA idi not recognize the signature on the Statute and accordingly they " unsigned " ( One wonders if this has anything to do with the war on terror and Iraq? )

Note : Some ot the countries not yet signed up are :- USA, China, India, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Uzbekistan, North Korea
Syria, Belarus and Saudia Arabia . ( Thus it seems that the US lines up with the world's worst human rights violators )

Secondly a definition of the crimes which the ICC can charge an individual : -

Genocide
Crimes against Humanity ( Including Sexual Crimes )
War Crimes

Further crimes under consideration are Aggression; Terrorism and Drug Trafficking

The fist three most serious crimes are carefully defined in the Rome Statute :-

1 Genocide - Killing and causing serious harm committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

2 Crimes against Humanity - Acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population. To include murder, extermination, rape, sexual slavery, the enforced disappearance of persons, and the crime of apartheid, among others.

3 War Crimes - This covers grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and other serious violations of the laws of war, committed on a large scale in International as well as Internal armed conflicts.

The inclusion of " Internal Conflicts " is consistent with the reality that in the past 50 years the most serious crimes have been within States and not International. Previously the Internal matters of a nation state, rather like Domestic abuse were considered to be beyond the business and jurisdiction of other nations, or individuals.

All the above applies to individuals and not to Nation States.

Visit the site below to see a list of Dictators and other "Monsters", and to see how many people have died due to International Crimes, and also innocent civilians during the course of Wars. Also the considerations regarding whether Hiroshima and Nagisaki should be considered to be War Crimes as well as the bombing of Dresden and the Vietnam war.

Click here for 1900: a century of genocides