Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity

With Judgment No. 238/2014, the Italian Constitutional Court (hereinafter Court) quashed the Italian legislation setting out the obligation to comply with the sections of the 2012 decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy; Greece intervening) (Jurisdictional Immunities or Germany v. Italy) that uphold the rule of sovereign immunity with respect to compensation claims in Italian courts based on grave breaches of human rights, including—in the first place—the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court found the legislation to be incompatible with Articles 2 and 24 of the Italian Constitution, which secure the protection of inviolable human rights and the right of access to justice (operative paras. 1, 2).

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SYRIA – “THE WAR WITH MULTIPLE PROXIES”. VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

STRATEGIES XXI - Security and Defense Faculty ◽

10.53477/2668-2001-21-20 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 167-178

Author(s):

Daniela Vetina Ene

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Civil War ◽

International Conflict ◽

War Crimes ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

International Humanitarian Law ◽

Humanitarian Law ◽

Amnesty International ◽

Geneva Conventions ◽

The Arab Spring

The civil war in Syria, triggered by the pro-democracy demonstrations of the "Arab Spring", was a complicated combination of religious, cultural and ethnic-identity contradictions. The non-international conflict was turned into a "battlefield" for foreign powers, which led to the transformation of a civil war into a "war with multiple proxies". The United Nations' efforts to mediate the conflict, based on a six-point plan, remained in the draft phase. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have denounced flagrant violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the al-Assad regime, which has widely used non-discriminatory weapons banned in violation of the Geneva Conventions, 1949. The Bashār al-Assad regime is accused by the international community of being guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but attempts to incriminate it have failed.

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Odpowiedzialność osób zarządzających w transnarodowych korporacjach w prawie karnym – aspekty międzynarodowe i transnarodowe

Problemy Prawa Karnego ◽

10.31261/ppk.2020.04.03 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 75-96

Author(s):

Kamil Boczek

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Criminal Responsibility ◽

Transnational Corporations ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Criminal Proceedings ◽

Corporate Managers ◽

Business Opportunity ◽

The World ◽

International Laws ◽

Forced Labour

Owing to increasing globalisation, transnational corporations play an important role in international trade. Those wealthy and very complex entities have a major impact on reality and often engage in activities which involve illegal practices such as the environmental pollution, forced labour and other serious infringement of employees’ right or even crimes against humanity. Carrying on business which is primarily profit-oriented may result in violations of fundamental human rights, if this is required for a corporation to financially exploit a business opportunity. It is difficult in practice to hold these entities and their corporate directors to account. Regulations regarding criminal responsibility of managers of transnational corporations can be found in national and international laws. However, criminal proceedings do not give satisfactory results. The main problem lies in powers, flexibility and close links of those corporations with local authorities. The paper points to different solutions applied throughout the world, and describes the best-known criminal proceedings against corporate managers.

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Rape and Human Rights

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2006.121.5.1662 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 121 (5) ◽

pp. 1662-1664 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jean Franco

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

United Nations ◽

Ethnic Group ◽

International Criminal ◽

International Criminal Tribunal ◽

Former Yugoslavia ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Geneva Conventions ◽

War Criminals ◽

The United Nations

According to the report of the United Nations commission on Human Rights, rape is the least condemned war crime (coomaraswamy, Further Promotion 64n263). Although wartime rape was listed as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and by the Geneva Conventions, it was not until 2001 that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia identified rapists as war criminals. In that year the tribunal sentenced three men for violations of the laws or customs of war (torture, rape) and crimes against humanity (torture, rape) committed during the war in Bosnia during the 1993 takeover of Foca, where women were systematically raped and killed, the purpose being “to destroy an ethnic group by killing it, to prevent its reproduction or to disorganize it, removing it from its home soil.”

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International Criminal Court

International Journal for Innovation Education and Research ◽

10.31686/ijier.vol3.iss9.431 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 3 (9) ◽

pp. 41-51

Author(s):

Charles B.A Ubah ◽

Osy E. Nwebo

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Criminal Court ◽

Justice System ◽

International Criminal ◽

Criminal Court ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Human Rights Abuses ◽

National Courts ◽

Domestic Jurisdiction ◽

National Governments

The principle of domestic jurisdiction in international law makes national governments responsible for protecting their citizens, investigating alleged abuses of human rights in their countries and bringing the perpetrators to justice. They governments may also extradite those accused of abuse of human rights to any other states prepared to give them a fair trial. Problem arises however, when governments are unable or unwilling to perform this duty or are themselves perpetrators of these crimes. Thus, millions of people have fallen victims of genocide, crimes against humanity and serious violations of humanitarian laws. But only very few of these perpetrators have been brought to justice in national courts as many governments claim sanctuary under the principle of domestic jurisdiction. The need therefore arises for the international community to act in order to protect helpless or defenseless citizens from being victims of crimes against humanity and human rights abuses, by bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to justice. The thrust of this article therefore, is that the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) fills this void by fulfilling a central and pivotal goal in international jurisprudence. This article, therefore, provides insights and lessons into the history and prospects of the International Criminal Court. These are insights and lessons that are too important and too costly to ignore in the 21st century understanding of international criminal justice system.

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3 The Approaches (1955)

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights ◽

10.1093/law/9780198863151.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Pace John P

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Annual Reports ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Advisory Services ◽

Implementation Processes ◽

Shared Information ◽

Paris Principles ◽

Domestic Level ◽

Fellowships And Scholarships

This chapter describes the various approaches adopted by the Commission on Human Rights—and later by the Human Rights Council—to support implementation processes, starting with the introduction of Advisory Services in 1955. These were to serve as a support for the Commission’s work in implementing its programme of work, notably the follow-up to its work on the International Bill of Human Rights. These services were to be provided at the request of Governments and to consist of: ‘(i) Advisory services of experts, (ii) Fellowships and scholarships, (iii) Seminars’. In 1956, the Commission opened up yet another approach. The Yearbook on Human Rights had introduced a system of ‘Annual Reports on human Rights’ whereby governments shared information on measures taken at the domestic level. The chapter traces the development of other approaches by the Commission including investigations, regional commissions, national institutions (including the Paris Principles) and voluntary funds. It also looks at the emergence of international (or hybrid) criminal tribunals, all of which included crimes against humanity (or human rights crimes) in their jurisdiction.

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The Puzzle of Atrocity Criminalization

Criminalizing Atrocity ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198850441.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Mark S. Berlin

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Criminal Law ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Criminal Courts ◽

Qualitative Case Studies ◽

National Courts ◽

Domestic Courts ◽

Quantitative Analyses

Why do governments take atrocity offenses, like genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, from international law and legislate them into domestic criminal law, empowering national courts to prosecute their own, and sometimes other states’, government and military officials? The question is important, because the international community has constructed an international legal regime to prosecute the most serious human rights violations, but that regime is designed to rely primarily on domestic criminal courts to try offenders. To fulfill this role, domestic courts often require specific legislation that defines and criminalizes these offenses in national law. Yet, the adoption of national atrocity laws is puzzling, since in a number of ways, these laws appear to threaten states’ interests. This introductory chapter highlights the puzzle of atrocity criminalization and discusses its importance for the functioning of the international atrocity regime. It then situates this study in existing literatures and highlights the book’s contributions to research on atrocity justice, human rights, and international law. Next, it summarizes the book’s main arguments and details the study’s multi-method research design, which combines quantitative analyses of new, original datasets with in-depth qualitative case studies of Guatemala, Colombia, Poland, and the Maldives.

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2 Crimes Against Humanity Under General International Law

International Crimes: Law and Practice ◽

10.1093/law/9780198860099.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mettraux Guénaël

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Armed Conflict ◽

Core Values ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Human Beings ◽

International Crimes ◽

The Relationship

This chapter discusses crimes against humanity under international law. Crimes against humanity were first introduced at Nuremberg as a means of criminalizing three sorts of criminality that so far had evaded the sanction of international law: atrocities committed outside the context of an armed conflict or independent of it; crimes committed against fellow nationals or nationals of allied nations; and institutionalized discriminatory violence that resulted in individuals being targeted and mistreated by a state because of their identity. Crimes against humanity seek to protect core attributes of all human beings: their dignity; their humanity; and their fundamental human rights. The notion of crimes against humanity reflects the fact that the protection of those interests and the punishment of serious violations of these interests is a matter of universal concern. It also makes it clear that the protection arising from international law does not depend on the nationality of the victim or his membership in a group, nor on his or relationship to the perpetrator. Instead, it is the sheer humanity of the victim that warrants and justifies the criminalization of such acts. And whilst the notion of genocide and crimes against humanity overlap in part in their efforts to protect these core values, unlike genocide, crimes against humanity seek to protect individuals as such, rather than groups of individuals. The chapter then looks at the relationship between crimes against humanity and other international crimes as well as the process of defining crimes against humanity.

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in medical-ethical perspective

Medicina e Morale ◽

10.4081/mem.1999.809 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 49-59

Author(s):

Willem J. Eijk

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Assisted Suicide ◽

Choice Theory ◽

Universal Declaration ◽

Crimes Against Humanity ◽

Right To Life ◽

Ethical Perspective ◽

Surgical Interventions ◽

Definition Of ◽

The Right

Notwithstanding its impressive achievements in combating crimes against humanity, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers no sufficient basis for medical ethics. It does not provide a clear definition of the human being who is subject of human rights, thus giving room for philosophical anthropologies according to which fetuses or neonates are no human persons yet or at most ‘marginal persons’. Because the Declaration likewise fails to define the concept of right, it can be interpreted from the perspective of classical theories of right as well as from that of the ‘choice theory of right’. If, as the last states, the right to life would include the right to dispose of it, the Declaration could serve to defend euthanasia, assisted suicide and manipulative medical and surgical interventions as well.

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