Sadat, Leila Nadya --- "Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity" [2012] ELECD 792; in Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne (eds), "The Challenge of Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Challenge of Human Rights

Editor(s): Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857939005

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity

Author(s): Sadat, Leila Nadya

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

8. Forging a convention for crimes
against humanity
Leila Nadya Sadat

During the trials of the German and Japanese leaders by the Allies follow-
ing World War II, crimes against humanity emerged as an independent
basis of individual criminal liability in international law. Although the
so-called `Martens Clause' of the 1907 Hague Convention Respecting
the Laws and Customs of War on Land referenced the `laws of human-
ity, and . . . the dictates of the public conscience'1 as protections available
under the law of nations to human beings caught in the ravages of war,
this language was too uncertain to provide a clear basis for either state
responsibility or criminal liability under international law.2 Subsequently,
crimes against humanity were specifically included in the Charters of the
International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg3 and Tokyo4 to address
depredations directed by the State against civilian populations ­ including
those within their own borders. Indeed it was in many ways the most revo-
lutionary of the charges upon which the accused were convicted, given that
its foundations in international law were so fragile.5 Following the trials,
the Nuremberg Principles embodied in the IMT Charter and Judgment
were adopted by the General Assembly in 1946,6 and codified by the



1 Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War by Land [1910]

UKTS 9, annex, preamble.
2 See, for example, Leila Nadya Sadat, `The Interpretation of the Nuremberg

Principles by the French Court of Cassation: From Touvier to Barbie and Back
Again' (1994) ...