Submitted by: Submitted by SHINU03
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Category: Societal Issues
Date Submitted: 02/16/2011 11:17 PM
Crimes against Humanity
In our society, there exist many crimes against humanity. A crime against humanity is a term in international law that refers to acts of a persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, as being the criminal offence above all others.
The Rome Statue Explanatory Memorandum states that crimes against humanity “are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or mote human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion.”
The war crimes are also crimes against humanity. It takes the life of many a people. Under the Nuremberg Principles, the supreme international crime is that of commencing a war of aggression because it is the crime from which all war crimes follow. The definition of such a crime is planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances.
The United Nations has been primarily responsible for the prosecution of crimes against humanity since it was chartered in 1948. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was organized by the Rome Statute and the UN has delegated several crimes against humanity cases to the ICC. Because these cases were referred to the ICC by the UN,...