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war-crimes-factsheet-311008
31-10-2008  Fact Sheet  
War Crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and their source in International Humanitarian Law
The present comparativetable seeks to provide the war crimes over which the International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction, together with the definition of such offences as found in other sources of international humanitarian law (IHL).

The table aims, on the one hand, to identify the origin of the terms used in the Statute's definitions of war crimes and, on the other, to highlight the differences in wording and content between those definitions and obligations arising under IHL instruments.

More specifically, crimes under the ICC Statute are compared with the following:

  • Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I;
  • Other serious violations of the laws and customs of war applicable in international armed conflicts (based primarily on the 1899 Hague Declaration, the 1907 Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention No. IV, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its protocols, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, and the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia);
  • Serious violations of the laws and customs of war applicable in non-international armed conflicts (based primarily on Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, their Additional Protocol II of 1977, the 1999 Optional Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, the Statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone).

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31-10-2008