International Criminal Law Free Essay Example, 3500 words

Lemkin felt, during his documentation of Hitler’s offenses, strongly felt that such practices justified a reconsideration of some principle in international law. He states the issue as â€Å"whether government can destroy with impunity its own citizens and whether such acts of destruction are domestic affairs or matters of international concern. Practically speaking, should the moral right of humanitarian intervention be converted into a right under international law? †7 The implications of this question require a rethinking of the principles of criminal law which holds that criminal jurisdiction vests in a court when the crime is committed within the territorial jurisdiction of that court. Normally therefore, where a crime is committed even by a state’s own national, but outside its territory, no action may be brought against the national in that state Lemkin’s question proposes to make genocide an international crime, where action can be brought in a tribunal in another state for crimes committed outside its territory. Lemkin likened genocide to piracy, where the act is treated as a crime under the law of nations, in which case every state should be able to take jurisdiction over such acts irrespective of the nationality of the offender and of the place where the crime was committed. In 1945, the German war criminals were indicted on the crime of genocide and other offenses, for the extermination of the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and ot her racial or religious groups. We will write a custom essay sample on International Criminal Law or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now The term genocide had to be created to encompass the legal concept of the destruction of human groups, with the intent to â€Å"wipe out entirely the biological power of the neighbours of Germany, so that Germany might win a permanent victory, whether directly through military subjugation or indirectly through geological destruction. Germany’s eventual defeat is immaterial, for as long as its neighbours whom it considered its enemies would be so weakened that Germany would be able to recover its strength years after its defeat8. Consequently, in August 1945, the triumphant World War II Allies decided that the high Nazi officials shall be held accountable through a series of criminal trials. In order to realize this, they appended a list of â€Å"crimes against humanity† to the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of the Major War Criminals. The so-called crimes against humanity were defined as â€Å"murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. †9 Extermination and persecution â€Å"’Crimes against humanity’ is an international criminal justice offence; the pertpetration of acts of war upon a civilian, non-soldier population. †10 As related in the previous section, it was appended to the document entitled Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of the Major War Criminals, which was put into effect in the Nuremberg trials.