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Historical background War crimes are violations of the and customs of the law of armed conflict and are punishable whether committed by combatants or civilians, including the nationals of neutral states. 2 Occasionally the term has been used to include acts like espionage 3 or war treason 4
It has been accepted since antiquity that some restraint should be observed during armed conflict. This book examines the apparent dichotomy and introduces any study of the law of armed conflict by considering the nature and legality of war. The purpose of what is known as the law of armed conflict or, more commonly, the law of war is to reduce the horrors inherent therein to the greatest extent possible, bearing in mind the political purpose for which the war is fought, namely to achieve one's policies over one's enemies. The discussion on the history and sources of the law of armed conflict pays most attention to warfare on land because that is the region for which most agreements have been drawn up, although attention has been accorded to both aerial and naval warfare where it has been considered necessary. Traditionally, international law was divided into the law of war and the law of peace, with no intermediate stage between. Although diplomatic relations between belligerents are normally severed once a conflict has commenced, there remain a number of issues, not all of which are concerned with their inter-belligerent relations, which require them to remain in contact. War crimes are violations of the and customs of the law of armed conflict and are punishable whether committed by combatants or civilians, including the nationals of neutral states. The book also talks about the rights and duties of the Occupying Power, civil defence, branches of international law and prisoners of war.
interests over the rights or citizens and the rule of law; the criminalisation and corruption of significant elements of the police and intelligence agencies particularly; and a legacy of war crimes and human rights abuses. Since 2000, some progress has been made in addressing these problems, particularly in relation to role re-definition. Nevertheless, serious organisational challenges
implications in the security sector itself, including the militarisation of the police, the maintenance of very large armed forces in proportion to the country’s size and a habit of high spending on security sector budgets. Finally, elements of the Croatian security sector in were implicated in war crimes, leading to the indictment of a number of personnel by the ICTY
numerous initiatives by the EC, the United States, the UN, Nato and other international actors, including: imposing economic sanctions against Yugoslavia and providing humanitarian aid; deploying UN peacekeepers and establishing ‘safe areas’; mediating in ceasefires and hosting peace conferences; brokering an alliance between the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments; setting up a war crimes tribunal
with the invasion of Gaza – committing war crimes, echoed by its enemy Hamas, according to a 575-page report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by a distinguished team led by Justice Richard Goldstone. 7 The displacement on the Palestinian side of the secular (but corrupt) Fatah by the fundamentalist Hamas had been part of the same long-running process of polarisation which had undermined the moderate ‘peace camp
responsible for crimes they committed if they were in a mental state in which they were unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Bearing in mind that the medicines and technologies associated with the development of super soldiers aim to alter soldiers’ psychological faculties, we could ultimately create a situation where war crimes might be unpunished. A second potential legal problem attached to capacity-increasing technologies
, anger, and many other similar emotions that have contributed to the perpetration of war crimes in the past. It is possible to argue that this type of technology might play a positive role in the ethics of warfare by limiting the risk of such atrocities being committed. However, these ethical outcomes cannot alone justify their use, because capacity-increasing technologies can also lead to moral drift, such as treating humans as mere
international treaty law outlining what was not acceptable during war, for much of the modern period the sovereign state, with important exceptions like the Nuremburg and Tokyo war crime trials, remained the sole arbiter in determining who was guilty of violating these laws. This, in turn, raised questions as to the effect that jus in bello laws had on restraining the use of force. In the immediate post
so are the gains from bringing it to light. First, it helps us understand little-known forms of state violence. The concepts of elites and eliticide are useful to identify its deliberate and rational aspects. Second, bringing to light the eliticidal design is an important correction to the portrayal of war crimes predominantly in terms of irrational or insane ideological motivations. The eliticide conducted by