Crimes Against Humanity

1. They are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious

attack on human dignity or a grave humiliation or degradation of one
one or more persons.
2. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part of a widespread
or systemic practice of atrocities .
3. They are prohibited and may consequently be punished regardless of
whether they are perpetrated in time war or peace.
4. The victims of the crime may be civilians, or, where crimes are
committed during armed conflict, persons who do not take part(or no
longer take part)in armed hostilities, as well as under customary
international law(but not under the Statute of the ICTY,ICTR, and
ICC), enemy combatant.
Overlapping of IHL and ICL.
Chart Title

IHl ICL
[PERCENTAGE]
50%
Some Legal Concept of the IHL/ICL
• IHL which traditionally regulates warfare between or within states.
• IHL includes what State can do to their citizens, and more generally to
individuals under their control.
• District Court held in 1951, Enigster case the following,
• A person who was himself persecuted confined in the same camp as
his victims can, from the legal point of view, be guilty of a crime
against humanity if he performs inhumane acts, against his fellow
prisoners. In contrast to a war criminal, the perpetrators of a crime
against humanity does not have to be a man who identified himself
with the persecuting regime or its evil intention.
Continuation

• In summary, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial,

religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of
crime against humanity only if they are part of a practice.
• Origin of the notion.
• Humanity was propounded on 28th May, 1915.
• Russian foreign minister- Sazonov.
• The law of Humanity is not certain. Changes with time, place and
situation.
• Ottoman Empire established court Martial in 1919-20
Continuation
• In 1945 on the insistence of US and allies International Milittary
tribunal was established. (IMT)
• Article 6(c) requires that to be a crime against Humanity, it should be
a War crime committed in peace or during battle .
• ICTR, ICTY, ICL
• Article 7 ICC statute codify the custom of the ICC.