Five Principles Of International Criminal Law

Identify and define the five principles determining international jurisdiction in criminal law

International criminal law is a body of jurisdiction that outlaws certain categories of conduct considered to be serious crimes and sets procedures for investigation, trial and punishment of offenders (Werle & Jessberger, 2014). The suppression of serious international crimes is essential to ensuring respect for international community. Werle and Jessberger (2014) proposes five basic principles upon which the international criminal law is based on, which are discussed in this write-up.

The first one is the Protective Principle. This principle recognizes that, every nation can adopt a law that criminalizes conduct that occurs exterior to its borders

First, there should be a well establish national policy framework. Robert argues that, a good national policy on combating terrorism should endorse clear guidelines on how to handle hostage crisis, especially by unifying rescue forces, organization of intelligence apparatus, and the political headship. To Robert, the policy must embrace the core values of the concerned society and should be clear to distinguish between terrorism and various forms of political violence. In addition, the policy should clearly define the responsibilities of the government in order to avoid abuse of citizen rights especially on issues of surveillance and access of data from the citizens, visitors, and immigrants (Robert, 2011).

Secondly, Robert proposes for development of a national strategy for combating terrorism. According to Robert, such strategy should provide clear roles and mission of each involved agency and provide specific deadlines and coordination instructions. To Robert, some of the agencies that ought to be included in the national strategy for combating terrorism include diplomacy, intelligence, law enforcement, customs, border control, finance, information, agriculture, health, emergency services, military, among others (Robert,

Among them is, both types of violence are driven by political motivations (O 'neill, 2006). However, fundamental differences do exist between terrorism and an insurgency. The first difference is based on definition. While terrorism is a politically motivated form of violence or threat against unarmed civilians by sub-state actors, insurgency refers to a tussle between a non-ruling group and the political class, whereby the non-ruling group organize themselves into regular military forces to wage violence against combatants (O 'neill,