Search results
Reagan to a cemetery in Bitburg where SS troops were buried. This prompted the ‘historians’ dispute’ (Historikerstreit), a debate among prominent West German historians about whether the Holocaust can be regarded as a unique phenomenon. Significantly, Ernst Nolte, one of the main protagonists in the debate, drew parallels between the victims of the Holocaust and the German expellees, maintaining that both groups were deserving of sympathy, an argument his critics saw as an attempt to relativise Nazi war crimes.6 The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe
and established ad hoc war crimes tribunals. In 1999 in the light of acts taken against dissidents in Kosovo province, and anticipating a veto by Russia and/or China, NATO without any resort to the Security Council made a series of demands upon Yugoslavia. When these were rejected, NATO, in the name of humanity, instituted a series of aerial bombing raids against Serbia. It also announced its intention
war crime in their prosecutions for crimes against humanity which included acts of sexual violence.14 Moreover, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, rape and sexual slavery, along- Bosnia: genocidal rape and its children 153 side forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation and similarly grave acts of sexual violence have now been recognised as both crimes against humanity and war crimes.15 In addition, since then these issues have featured in a variety of UN resolutions, detailing the member states’ obligations relating to
Background to crimes against humanity The origins of crimes against humanity are less clear than those of war crimes, but the concept was first invoked in the early nineteenth century in order to condemn brutal treatment by a State of its own citizens. 1 The concept of crimes against humanity was also referred to in the preambular paragraphs of the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration and the 1907 Hague Convention, which alluded to limits imposed by the ‘laws of humanity’ during armed conflicts, but the notion
of state and sub-state terrorism, leading to one of today’s ‘worst humanitarian crises directly caused by war crimes and crimes against humanity for which the Sudanese government is responsible’. 8 According to Amnesty International reports, the Sudanese government is systematically killing the black Sudanese of Darfur, using Arab militias, its air force, and organized starvation. The result has been the brutal killing of hundreds of thousands of black Sudanese and a further 1.8 million displaced people left to starve. Amnesty concludes that ‘there is a large
00 Crimes Against Humanity i-xiv 3/12/10 10:09 Page vi Introduction The idea of crimes against humanity was born, formally speaking, at the end of the Second World War. It was one of three classes of offence – the other two being crimes against peace and war crimes – in the London Charter signed by the Allied Powers on 8 August 1945, and it made up Count Four of the indictment of Nazi leaders and officials before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. This much is a matter of generally agreed fact. Much else about the idea, however, is contested
for humanitarian reasons to the ‘less confrontational idea of a responsibility to protect’, 33 but the substance remains the same. In 2005 at intergovernmental level, the Outcome Document of the UN World Summit (15 September) made it a primary responsibility of states to protect their population against ‘genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing’; if they fail to do so, a ‘timely and decisive response’ becomes the responsibility of the
participants are treated fairly and equally throughout • Ensuring the study 119 BEE (RESEARCH) PRINT.indd 119 11/05/2018 16:16 Learning objectives By the end of this chapter you should be able to: 1. Explain why sound ethical procedures for the planning and conduct of research are important 2. Understand key principles that govern the conduct of ethical research 3. Illuminate each principle with case examples relevant to service-user-led research. Introduction Following the end of World War Two, sixteen Nazi doctors were tried and convicted of war crimes involving
efforts of parts of a federation to break away from the established state as if they were international conflicts, as has been the case in Yugoslavia, with the Security Council going so far as to establish an ad hoc tribunal to judge those accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. 13 Because of the extent of atrocities committed during the civil war in Rwanda, the Council
The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).