Sexual Offences in International Criminal Law, with a Special Focus on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Abstract:     
The paper intends to explain and critically analyse the legal elements of the sexual offences in International Criminal Law (‘ICL’), with a special focus on the Rome Statute. Thus, the starting point is the Rome System, including the growing, albeit incipient, case law of the ICC. The case law of the Ad Hoc Tribunals will be taken into account as far as it provides basic definitions of sexual offences. The paper focuses on the explicit criminalizations, i.e. the offences codified explicitly as sexual acts (section 4.2.). Implicit criminalizations will only be dealt with in a complimentary manner (section 4.3.). Before starting with the legal analysis some general remarks on the integration of sexual violence in ICL and international crimes in general are necessary (section 4.1.).

Number of Pages in PDF File: 32

Accepted Paper Series