The ICC Statute was adopted on 17 July 1998 and entered into force on 1 July 2002. The ICC has the power to prosecute cases of genocide (Art. 6) and war crimes and crimes against humanity, but only if the crime was committed on the territory of a State that has ratified the Statute or by a national of a State that has ratified the Statute. If the State in which the offence was committed has not ratified the Rome Statute, or if the State of which the accused is a national has not ratified it, the Security Council is the only body that can trigger the exercise of ICC jurisdiction. If the States concerned have accepted the Court`s jurisdiction, such a case may be referred to the ICC in three ways: referral of a situation to the Court (1) by a State Party; (2) by the prosecutor himself, on the basis of information on acts of genocide obtained from any reliable source; or (3) by the Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations (measures relating to the threat or breach of the peace). In 2021, the governments of the United States, Canada and the Netherlands accused China of committing genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang, while several other countries introduced parliamentary resolutions making the same accusation. Cases of “systematic and large-scale violence against the civilian population”. Although the term mass atrocities has no formal legal definition, it generally refers to genocide (as defined above), crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. The first case to put the Genocide Convention into practice was that of Jean Paul Akayesu, the Hutu mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba at the time of the killings. In a landmark judgement handed down on 2 September 1998, a special international tribunal convicted Akayesu of genocide and crimes against humanity. The first States and parties to violate the Genocide Convention were Serbia and Montenegro, as well as many Bosnian Serb leaders. In Bosnia and Herzegovina v.

In the Serbia and Montenegro case, the International Court of Justice delivered its Judgment on 26 February 2007. He acquitted Serbia of any direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war. The International Tribunal`s findings relate to two allegations of genocide, including the 1992 campaign of ethnic cleansing in communities across Bosnia, as well as the convictions related to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which the tribunal stated: “Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide, they aimed at extermination, the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica. The Trial Chamber refers to crimes by their appropriate names, genocide … ». However, the individual convictions applicable to the 1992 ethnic cleansing were not obtained. A number of national courts and legislators have concluded that these events meet the criteria of genocide, and the ICTY has concluded that the acts and intent to destroy are being carried out, that “dolus specialis” is still in question, and before MICT, the UN war crimes tribunal. [11] However, Belgrade found that Belgrade violated international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and by failing to bring to justice those accused of genocide or transfer them to the ICTY in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular with regard to General Ratko Mladić. [13] [14] After the destruction of World War II, the United Nations passed a resolution to prevent such atrocities in the future. Known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (78 U.N.T.S. 278 [December 9, 1948]), the resolution recognized genocide as an international crime and provided for its punishment.

Proposed and in part formulated by Lemkin, who had worked tirelessly for its adoption, the convention also criminalized conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to genocide, attempted genocide, and complicity in genocide. Its definition of genocide states that a person must intend to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Therefore, the victims of war are not necessarily victims of genocide, even if they all belong to the same national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The Convention obliges signatory states to enact laws to punish those convicted of genocide and allows each signatory state to request the United Nations to assist in the prevention and punishment of genocide. The convention itself was ineffective. Article XI of the Convention requires UN member countries to ratify the document, something many have failed to do for nearly 50 years. The United States did not ratify the Convention until 1988. Before doing so, it accompanied its obligations with certain agreements: (1) the term “intent to destroy” in the Convention`s definition of genocide means “a specific intention to annihilate”; (2) that the term “psychological harm” used in the Convention as an example of genocidal tactics means “permanent impairment of mental capacity by drug or torture”; 3. whereas an extradition convention forming part of the Convention covers only acts recognised as criminal offences both by the country requesting extradition and by the country to which the request is made; and (4) acts committed in the course of an armed conflict or war do not constitute genocide if they are not committed with the specific intention of destroying a group of persons. The ICTY Trial Chamber (Krstic case, 2 August 2001, para. 550) defines genocide as follows: In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C.A.

§ 1182), a comprehensive reform of immigration laws. As part of this reform, Congress ordered that aliens guilty of genocide be barred from entering the United States or deported if discovered. However, the INA lacks a clear definition of genocide that refers only to the UN Convention drafted more than 40 years earlier. The term genocide was coined in 1943 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who combined the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill). Genocide refers to any criminal enterprise that aims to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular type of human group as such by certain means. These are two elements of the particular intent of genocide: (1) the act or actions must target a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; and (2) the act or actions must be aimed at destroying that group in whole or in part.