Since the end of World War II, we the peoples of the world, acting through our nation-state governments, have codified or created numerous international human rights norms. This started with 1945’s Charter of the United Nations and 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Other multilateral human rights treaties have followed, including the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.[1]
Given the world’s nation-state sovereignty basis, we the peoples of the world have grappled with the very real problem of how to enforce such norms in order to punish violators, to deter future violations, to provide redress to victims and survivors, and to investigate and promulgate the “truth” about past violations. The response has been the creation of various mechanisms, none of which is perfect: state reporting to U.N. Charter and treaty bodies for review, comment and recommendations; complaints by states and individuals to such bodies for recommended solutions; international investigations of specific countries or problems; civil litigation for money damages against violators in domestic courts and international courts like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; and truth commissions.[2]
Another response has been seeking to subject violators to criminal sanctions (imprisonment) in national courts under the international law principle of universal jurisdiction whereby a nation’s courts have legitimate criminal jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes no matter where in the world such crimes were committed. Criminal sanctions have also been imposed by international criminal tribunals like the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals at the end of World War II and more recently by so called ad hoc tribunals created by the U.N. Security Council (the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)). Even more recently the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been created.[3] Collectively these mechanisms often are referred to as international criminal justice.
In future posts we will examine a Spanish court’s use of the universal jurisdiction principle to commence criminal investigations. In other posts we will analyze the International Criminal Court and its relations with the United States.
[1] David Weissbrodt, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Joan Fitzpatrick, and Frank Newman, International Human Rights: Law, Policy and Process, ch. 1 (4th ed. 2009) [“Weissbrodt”].
[2] Id. , chs. 4-6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16.
[3] Id. at 11, 483-586. The text of the Rome Statute, which will be referenced throughout this article, is available at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf.
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Thank you for your positive comments.
From my work as an Adjunct Professor co-teaching international human rights law, I developed a strong interest in international criminal justice and related subjects. There are many more sub-topics of this broader subject I plan to address in future posts.