Download This PaperElements and Innovations of a New Global Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity
Elements and Innovations of a New Global Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity, in THE GREY ZONE: CIVILIAN PROTECTION BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE LAWS OF WAR (Mark Lattimer & Philippe Sands, eds., 2017)
Washington University in St. Louis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20.03.08
19 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2017 Last revised: 14 Sep 2020
Date Written: August 25, 2017
Abstract
This essay traces the evolution of crimes against humanity prior to and during the Nuremberg trials; discusses the post-World War II prosecutions and legal developments of the crime as well as its codification in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and then explores the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative’s efforts to draft the first comprehensive, specialized convention beginning in 2008, which led to the adoption of the topic “crimes against humanity” by the UN International Law Commission in summer 2013, and the work of the Commission through 2016. It discusses the core elements of a new treaty on crimes against humanity, as well as the innovations a new treaty could bring to the further prevention and punishment of atrocity crimes.
Keywords: international law, crimes against humanity, humanitarian law, international criminal court, international law, Nuremberg, holocaust, customary international law, international courts and tribunals, international law commission, united nations
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