Crimes Against Humanity

A Crime Against Humanity has been defined as “a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.” Such crimes include the murder of political or social groups that are unprotected by the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. Since the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and mass murder of other ethnic, religious, political and social groups, the crime of “extermination” has been a crime against humanity, and its definition includes not only massacres but also “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.” Enslavement and deportation are also crimes against humanity. The purpose of these persecutions is not relevant to guilt, nor do charges of crimes against humanity require proof, as the charge of genocide does, of specific “intent to destroy” a group “in whole or in part.”

Further details on the current international law on Crimes Against Humanity may be found in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,  accessible at www.un.org/icc, article 7, 1-2, and in Chérif Bassiouni, “Crimes against Humanity,” Crimes of War Project: www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/crimes-against-humanity.html.