Crimes Against Humanity: Unveiling Atrocities The Dark Side of Modern Warfare

By Fouad Sabry

What is Crimes Against Humanity

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.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Crimes against humanity

Chapter 2: Genocide

Chapter 3: International Criminal Court

Chapter 4: War crime

Chapter 5: Universal jurisdiction

Chapter 6: Rome Statute

Chapter 7: Crime of apartheid

Chapter 8: Nuremberg principles

Chapter 9: International criminal law

Chapter 10: Command responsibility

(II) Answering the public top questions about crimes against humanity.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Crimes Against Humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Crimes against humanity

Crimes against humanity are massive or systemic violations of human rights carried out by or on behalf of a de facto authority, typically a state. Crimes against humanity, unlike war crimes, do not have to occur within the context of a war, and they refer to pervasive practices rather than individual acts. Although crimes against humanity apply to activities undertaken by or on behalf of authorities, they do not need to be part of an official policy and simply need to be tolerated by authorities in order to be considered crimes. During the Nuremberg trials, the first trial for crimes against humanity was held. After the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights articulated a worldwide standard of human rights that was initially proposed for widespread implementation in international law (1948). The political pathologies linked with crimes against humanity are exhibited by political groups or states that violate or incite violations of the human rights norms specified in the Declaration.

Since the Nuremberg trials, international and domestic courts have prosecuted crimes against humanity (such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court). The development of the law of crimes against humanity has mostly resulted from the emergence of customary international law. Crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention, hence the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative is leading a worldwide campaign to develop such a treaty.

Crimes against humanity, unlike war crimes, can be committed in both peace and war. They are neither isolated or sporadic because they are part of a government policy (though the offenders need not identify themselves with this policy) or a widespread pattern of atrocities that is permitted or supported by a government or de facto power. War of aggression, war crimes, murder, massacres, dehumanization, genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportations, unethical human experimentation, extrajudicial punishments including summary executions, the use of weapons of mass destruction, state terrorism or state sponsorship of terrorism, death squads, kidnappings and forced disappearances, the use of child soldiers, unjust imprisonment, enslavement, torture, rape, political repression, racial discrimination, religious persecution and other human rights abuses may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.

The phrase crimes against humanity is potentially misleading due to the ambiguity of the word humanity, which can refer to either humankind or the value of humanness. The term's origins indicate that the latter meaning is intended.

Several bilateral treaties negotiated in 1814 anticipated the signing of the multilateral treaty of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna (1815) because they featured moral language and language that condemned the slave trade. For instance, the Treaty of Paris (1814) between Britain and France featured the phrase principles of natural justice, while the British and American plenipotentiaries claimed in the Treaty of Ghent (1814) that the slave trade violated principles of humanity and justice..

The Republican Party Platform for the 1856 United States Presidential Election stated:

That all of these things have been done with the knowledge, approval, and assistance of the current National Administration; and that for this high crime against the Constitution, the Union, and humanity, we arraign that Administration, the President, his advisers, agents, supporters, and accomplices, either before or after the fact, before the nation and the world; and that it is our firm intention to bring the actual perpetrators of these atrocities to justice.

On June 4, 1854, at the Music Hall in Boston, the Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker preached a sermon titled A new crime against humanity in protest of the judicial proceedings that authorized the return of Anthony Burns from Boston to Alexandria, Virginia, under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The Republican Platform for the 1860 United States presidential election had the term in its ninth item:

9. That we condemn the recent reopening of the African slave trade under the cover of our national flag and with the assistance of perversions of judicial power as a crime against humanity and a blazing disgrace to our nation and age; and we call on Congress to take prompt and effective measures for the total and permanent suppression of that abhorrent trade.

George Washington Williams coined the phrase crimes against humanity. The phrase is included in what is known as the Martens Clause.

On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, released an unified declaration accusing another nation for the first time ever of committing a crime against humanity. A portion of this joint statement is as follows::

In light of these new crimes of the Ottoman Empire against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally accountable for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents involved in such massacres.

A commission on international war crimes advocated the establishment of a tribunal to investigate violations of the laws of humanity at the end of the war. However, the US delegation objected to references to law of humanity at the time since they were unclear and inadequately developed, and the subject was not pursued.

The London Charter of the International Military Tribunal established the regulations and procedures for the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War. The authors of this letter were faced with the dilemma of how to respond to the Holocaust and other heinous Nazi atrocities. The old definition of war crimes did not include crimes perpetrated by a power against its own civilians. Therefore, Article 6 of the Charter was revised to include crimes against humanity in addition to classic war crimes and crimes against peace.

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country in which the crime was committed.

Under this concept, crimes against humanity could only be punished if they were connected to war crimes or crimes against peace in some way.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial, was established to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three categories of crimes: Class A (crimes against peace), Class B (war crimes), and Class C (crimes against humanity), committed during World War II.

The legal underpinning for the trial was the 19 January 1946 proclamation of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (CIMTFE). The tribunal was established on May 3, 1946, and dissolved on November 12, 1948.

In the Tokyo Trial, no person was charged with Class C Crimes against Humanity.

A panel of eleven judges, one from each of the victorious Allied powers, presided over the IMTFE (United States, Republic of China, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Provisional Government of the French Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British India, and the Philippines).

The various forms of crimes that may constitute crimes against humanity vary depending on the international and national definitions. Isolated inhumane acts of a given sort done as part of a widespread or systematic onslaught may constitute significant violations of human rights or – depending on the circumstances – war crimes, but are not considered crimes against humanity.

In 1976, the General Assembly of the United Nations recognized as a crime against humanity the systematic persecution of one racial group by another, such as occurred during the apartheid regime in South Africa. Regarding apartheid in specifically, neither the UN General Assembly nor any prosecutions for crimes against humanity related to apartheid have been held.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Michael Lynk (UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian area) have accused Israel of perpetrating the apartheid crime against Palestinians.

Although Control Council Law No. 10 recognized rape as a crime against humanity, neither the Nuremberg nor Tokyo Charters had an explicit language defining sexual and gender-based crimes as war crimes or crimes against humanity. As a crime against humanity, rape was included in the statutes of both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The ICC is the first international body to explicitly include sexual and gender-based crimes, such as rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, and enforced sterilisation, as an underlying act of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in international and/or non-international armed conflicts.

Unlike genocide and war crimes, which have been generally recognized and forbidden in international criminal law since the adoption of the Nuremberg standards, torture has not been widely recognized and condemned, Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations has been largely responsible for the prosecution of crimes against humanity.

The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1674 on April 28, 2006. This resolution reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The resolution commits the Council to protecting civilians during armed conflicts.

In 2008, the United Nations Security Council enacted resolution 1820, which stated that sexual assault can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts constitutive of genocide..

Five decades passed between the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of 1945–1946 and the establishment