Intersections

• Pages: 157-159
• Author: Beth Van Schaack,Ronald C. Slye

157

Part II

INTERSECTIONS

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In this part, we shift gears to consider the core international

crimes—war crimes, crimes against the peace or aggression, crimes

against humanity, and genocide—alongside the primary

international criminal law (ICL) defenses and forms of responsibility.

This part focuses on crimes within the jurisdiction of the

International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international, or quasi-

international, tribunals. The terrorism crimes are addressed as

stand-alone crimes because they are closely related to the core crimes

and are the subject of active prosecution by states under

extraterritorial forms of jurisdiction, particularly with respect to

crimes being committed in the overlapping conflicts in Syria and

Iraq. In addition, the international crime of torture (which is also an

enumerated war crime and crime against humanity) is introduced

with reference to the defense of necessity. Largely excluded from this

discussion are other transnational crimes—such as money

laundering, trafficking in people and narcotics, and international

arms dealing—on the theory that such crimes are primarily (but not

exclusively) defined by domestic law and prosecuted before domestic

tribunals. Some of these transnational crimes were the primary

subject of early proposals for the ICC. Indeed, Trinidad and Tobago

first proposed reopening discussions on a permanent international

criminal court after years of Cold War quiescence because they

wanted an international forum to prosecute transnational drug

crimes that were overwhelming smaller transit states. As

negotiations for the ICC progressed, however, these crimes fell away,

and states focused on the core atrocity crimes.

As the following chapters indicate, the elements of international

law offenses overlap considerably. For one, a single act may implicate

multiple international crimes. For example, an act of murder can

constitute a war crime (when a protected person is intentionally

killed within the context of an armed conflict), a crime against

humanity (when a person is intentionally killed within the context of

a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population), or

an act of genocide (when a member of a protected group is killed with

the specific intent to destroy the person’s group, in whole or in part).

Similarly, consider the multiple counts the following event could

generate: A protected person from a minority ethnic group is

intentionally killed using a prohibited weapon in the context of the