The opinion that those persons who commit heinous acts against others should be held responsible for those actions, especially in the laws of war, have been present for centuries. It was not until after World War I, that this type of justice would gain an international stage. However, even though the Great War claimed the lives of millions of service members and citizens on each front it was viewed as the nation that was held responsible not the individual. World War II was a different matter. Though commanders received orders from high command it was ultimately under their discretion as how to proceed. Both the Axis and Allied powers committed atrocities, however history is written by the victors. At the end of World War II the crimes committed by the Germans and Japanese armed forces would come to light during the tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo. Unlike the war reparations of World War I, these trials would focus on the individuals who ordered the actions and those who were accomplices. These trials, and those of more recent years, would set the foundation of a plausible international criminal court and law to follow. The current court however is still in its infancy. Even international criminal law is continuing to evolve and develop in order to more effectively prosecute those who commit these atrocious acts. However, with the effect of globalization and the continuing cooperation of nations to aid one another, even with an underlying political agenda, the growth and plausibility of an international court can gain ground in the field of reality.
Currently, those who commit crimes of an international scale are brought to trial through tribunals and as of 2002, more often through the International Criminal Court. Though, even...
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... and in any place in the international realm especially since the growth of human trafficking where nearly half of those attacks can be placed. Though crimes against humanity can and are committed during times of war the separate category of war crimes, which can fall under international humanitarian law, is a violation of the laws and customs of war. These are breaches on international humanitarian law and its actions include: willful killing, torture or inhumane treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. The foundations of these crimes are found under the Geneva conventions held in 1949 consisting of four treaties and additional protocols. These laws and statues however exist only in times in international armed conflict. A separate, and shorter list, of prosecutable crimes in non-international conflict is provided by the ICC (Artice 8, 1998 Statute of the ICC).
Next in 1899, 1907, 1954 the International Peace Convention (originally The Hague Convention) where held because, in the last wars multiple cultural, art, literature and artifacts pieces were destroyed. Also, the community notice the rise in technology of weapons. The rules of war from the two convention consist of National and Cultural Symbols, Chemical and Biological warfare, Wounded and Sick Soldiers, POW (Geneva III), Civilians and Occupation, and Cultural Property. All of those are rules of war and the are severe consequences if they are broken. The United Nations and International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court) will take care of war crimes. Multiple other organizations were made by the U.N. to take care of certain wars for people such as, Nazi's and The Civil war in Yugoslavia. All countries are suppose to respect and follow the rules of war no matter the
The Nuremberg Trials is considered being both a step forward in for society as it brought the birth of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. However, the tribunal was a step back for society, this is because the Allies implicitly designed it to be a show of ‘Victor’s Justice’.
There have been many humanitarians that strive to help countries suffering with human right abuses. People think that the help from IGOs and NGOs will be enough to stop human rights violations. However, it hasn’t been effective. Every day, more and more human rights violations happen. The problem is escalating. People, including children, are still being forced to work to death, innocent civilians are still suffering the consequences of war, and families are struggling to stay firm together. Despite the efforts from the people, IGOs, and NGOs, In the year 2100, human rights abuse will not end.
Cronin-Furman, Kate. “Managing Expectations: International Criminal Trials and the Prospects for Deterrence of Mass Atrocity” in The International Journal of Transitional Justice. Vol. 7, No. 3 (2013): 434-454.
...d Crimes Against Humanity. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. (accessed March 24, 2014).
Greenfield, Daniel M. "Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters." The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 98.3 (2008): 921-24. HeinOnline. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
Back some couple centuries ago, genocide committed by states was seen as heroic, as they were allowed to commit such an atrocity in pursuit of building a larger empire (Lecture 9/18). Keep in mind, that the term “genocide” had not been officially defined by that time, thus not containing the same meaning as it does today. Instead of being seen as evil, states that committed genocide were seen as heroic. In-fact, William Blackstone once said “the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principal of the English constitution (Lecture 9/18). It wasn’t until 1948, that the term “genocide” had been officially labeled as an official term and international crime. This was declared by the United Nations. One of the first trials to occur due to this was the Nuremberg Trials. In the Nuremberg Trials, twenty-four Nazi leaders and six Nazi organizations were convicted on four counts (Lecture 9/18). Of those twenty-four convicted, twelve of those people were sentenced to the death penalty for the crimes they had committed. Fast-forwarding to the 90’s, 120 countries had signed an international treaty that established the International Court. The International Court was established in 1998 as a result of the treaty and it gave the ICC the jurisdiction to prosecute any related Genocide crimes (History.com). Before I move on
International law is a body of legally binding rules that are suppose to govern the relations between sovereign states. (Cornell Law School) In order to be a qualified subject, a state has to be sovereign. To be considered sovereign the state needs to have territory, a population, and a government that is recognized or legitimized to most other states. In the more modern explanation of international law now can include the rights and obligation on intergovernmental international organizations and even individuals. Examples of an international organization would be Greenpeace or the United Nations and an example of an individual would be war criminals, a leader of a state that violated human rights during a time of war. When a dispute arise and cannot be solved amongst the two actors involved they can turn to the U.N. to arbitrate and to the International Court of Justice, one of many courts within the U.N. to find a resolution to their problem. The International Court of Justice’s main task is to help settle legal disputes submitted to it by states and...
Treaties are the highest source of international law besides jus cogens norms that have binding effect on the parties that ratify them.2 International human rights treaties rely on the “name and shame” mechanisms to pressure states to improve practices.3 However with “toothless” international human rights norms, moral coercion is not always effective. An empirical study conducted by Professor Oona Hathaway assessing the effect of human rights treaty ratification on human rights compliance, maintains in its findings that ratification of human rights treaties has little effect on state practices.4 States do not feel pressured to comply and change their practices, rather, signing treaties is “more likely to offset the pressure rather than augment it.”5 So, is it time to abandon human rights treaties and remit protection of human right to domestic institutions. Hathaway posits elsewhere that despite this treaties “remain an indispensable tool for the promotion of human rights.”6 Instead of getting rid of the treaty system, it is necessary to enhance the monitoring and enforcements mechanism to strengthen the human rights regime to ensure compliance.7 This article evaluates the extent to which international law serves as a useful tool for protection of human rights.
Prior to WWII any concept of international human rights would not have been able to be Kept. State sovereignty was still the norm leaders around the globe followed when it came to international relations. Of course that all changed after the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in the Holocaust were exposed to the global community. After what had happen to the Jewish population in Europe at the hands of Hitler's army was reviled to the world, the international community realized that there was something to the whole idea of human rights that could quite possibly go beyond the recognizable sovereignty of independent states(Collaway, Harrelson-Stephens, 2007 p.4). December 17, 1942 was the date that leaders of the allied forces of WWII that included the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union came together and issued the first declaration that officially noted and acknowledged the mass murder of European Jews and settled to find a solution to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilians. Because of the type of acts that were committed some political leaders advocated for summary executions instead of trials (Collaway, Harrelson-Stephens, 2007). If you really think about it by doing this the allied forces would have been defeating the purpose of what they were trying to accomplish which was to make those responsible for the acts to pay but by giving them a f...
Although, within the U.N. Charter of 1945, Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against ‘the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’ (U.N. Charter, art.2 para.4), it has been suggested by counter-restrictionist international lawyers, that humanitarian intervention does not fall under these criteria, making it legally justifiable under the U.N. Charter (e.g. Damrosch 1991:219 in Baylis and Smith 2001: 481). However, this viewpoint lacks credibility, as it is far from the general international consensus, and unlikely the initial intentions of the draftsmen of the charter. In more recent times, one can examine the emerging doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’(RtoP), which was adopted unanimously by the UN in 2005, as a far more persuasive example of modern legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. While not consolidated within international law, RtoP, which promotes humanitarian intervention where sovereign states fail in their own responsibility to protect their citizens, does use legal language and functions as a comprehensive international framework to prevent human rights
The Death Penalty and War.Full Text Available By: Duner, Bertil; Geurtsen, Hanna. International Journal of Human Rights, Winter2002, Vol. 6 Issue 4, p1-28, 28p
...onal human rights law and international humanitarian law, as well as the development within international criminal law needed to enforce IHRL and IHL and the international criminal law itself, and criminal law traditionally imposes obligation on individuals, and duties on states to sanction violations committed by individuals.
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals that took place from November 20, 1954 to October 1, 1946. They were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was responsible for the Holocaust, a program of genocide that consisted of “the deliberate annihilation of approximately 6 million European Jews before and during WWII” (Seltzer 512). As Telford Taylor, the Chief Counsel for War Crimes, wrote in 1949, “Nuremberg has been both hailed as a milestone in the evolution of international law and morality, and condemned as a wreaking of vengeance by the perversion of justice.” The legacy these trials leave behind is complex, and begs us to question our humanity and the laws that define our society. What was discovered in Nuremberg proves to be a chilling reminder of what the human mind is capable of and the weakness of the human psyche. Even the most seemingly normal person can be corrupted and manipulated by their thirst for power or their obedience to the status quo.
A war crime is an unjust act of violence in which a military personnel violates the laws and acceptable behaviors of a war. Despite all the violence in a war, a soldier shooting another is not considered a war crime because it is not a violation to the laws and practices of a war, and it is considered just. A war crime is defined as a “violations [violation] of the laws and customs of war” (“War Crimes”), and are attacks “against civilian populations, prisoners of war, or in some cases enemy soldiers in the field” (Friedman). War crimes are typically committed with weapons or by uncommon, cruel, devastating military methods and are “…Committed primarily by military personnel” (Friedman). There are many different types of war crimes one can commit, including “murder, ill treatment…murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages or devastation not justified by military necessity” (Friedman). Originally constructed as international law by the London Charter on August 8th, 1945 and further developed by the Hague Conventions of 1899, 1907 and the Nuremberg trials, war crimes are aggressive, unacceptable and unjust actions performed by military workforce that occur during a war.