Chapter 11 International Criminal Law International criminal law Definition = branch of international law deals with international crimes

s and the courts and tribunals established to hear cases for persons who have committed international crimes Genesis = conceived for ears of aggression during the 1st and 2nd world war First international criminal tribunal = established to try Nazi war criminals o Another to try Japanese war criminals

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide = adopted by UN General Assembly on Dec. 9, 1948

International Criminal Court (ICC) Permanent criminal tribunal created in 1998 Rome Statute = United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court Came into existence on July 1, 2002 at The Hague, Netherlands

Genocide Crime under international law 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide = shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed or by such international penal tribunal Definitions o The deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people defined by their nationality or by their ethnic, cultural, or religious background. Any of the ff acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such: (Art. 6 of the ICC Statute) Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about it physical destruction in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew (to describe the systematic murder by Nazis of European Jews) o o Geno (greek word) = race or tribe Cide (latin word) = killing

Bosnian War = Bosnia v. Herzegovina, Serbs wanted to control all territories armed conflict between Serbs(31%), the Bosniaks (43%) and the Croats(17%), Dayton Peace Agreement (Nov. 21, 1995) Rwandan Genocide = 500,000-800,000 Tutsis were massacred by Hutus, Tutsis (minority at about 15%), assassination of the Rwandan President (Juvenal Habyarimana), Hutu militia organizations (Interahamew & Impuzamugambi), wiping out of all Tutsis ICJ v. ICC o o ICJ = only handles cases between states ICC = seek to deal individual criminal accountability

Principle of Individual Criminal Accountability o Underlying rationale for the establishment of an international criminal court

Application of International Criminal Law instead of National Criminal Law o Lack of political will in a nation to prosecute former high government officials Violent political turmoil, national institutions have collapsed