This chapter explores the interaction between international human rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL), as well as international criminal law. It examines how IHRL influences the application and development of IHL and how human rights principles are integrated into international criminal procedures and substantive law. The chapter discusses the mutual reinforcement and potential conflicts between these branches of international law, highlighting the need for a coherent and integrated approach. It also explores the role of international courts and tribunals in applying and interpreting IHRL, IHL, and international criminal law, and the challenges in ensuring compliance and accountability.

Atrocity crimes and grand corruption: the chapter argues that adopting a “corruption lens” is useful to characterize and understand patterns of crimes against humanity, especially whether acts are widespread or systematic, whether there is a state or organizational policy, how high-ranking actors are tied to crimes by subordinates (“modes of liability”) and whether specific acts constitute crimes under the ICC’s Rome Statute. The chapter uses examples from Mexico and Venezuela to illustrate.

In Chapter 6, we turn to the difficulty of studying sensitive data. In studying politically relevant issues, one may unavoidably encounter phenomena which are sensitive to talk about because they are painful for many. We point out that such data can best be studied if we distance ourselves from the object of our inquiry, by taking a contrastive look at our data. As a case study, we examine political apologies realised after the Second World War by representatives of the Japanese and German states, following war crimes perpetrated by their respective countries. Japanese and German war apologies are highly controversial and have often been described with sweeping overgeneralisations. We believe that it is important to venture beyond such overgeneralisations and examine in a bottom-up and contrastive way – relying on both qualitative and quantitative evidence – exactly how representatives of these countries realised their apologies.

Rebecca West’s novel of ideas, The Birds Fall Down, responds to the intense debate around capital punishment that took place in the UK after the Second World War. Partly motivated by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which West attended as a journalist, this debate led to the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill in 1947 and the establishment of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1949. Alongside other public intellectuals, West acted as an honorary member of the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, founded in 1955. In such non-fictional works as Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and A Train of Powder, West reflects on the meaning of justice and the appropriateness of punishment for murder, assassination, and crimes against humanity. In The Birds Fall Down, she extends her reflections to the political utility of assassination and the wisdom required to pass judgment on crimes and criminals.

Though their experience was in no way typical of American service in the Vietnam War, American prisoners of war have dominated American perceptions of the conflict. A small, strikingly homogenous group, the POWs were important because of, not despite, their unusual character. As most were pilots captured while waging air war against North Vietnam, they were subjected to harsh treatment by Vietnamese authorities, who sought to make them confess and repent their aggression against the Vietnamese people. But because aviators tended to be older, well-educated, white, career officers who identified deeply with the United States and its mission in Vietnam, American POWs were determined to resist Vietnamese coercion. In enduring torture rather than admit guilt, they inverted the wars moral framework, representing themselves as victims of Vietnamese aggression. Because they so neatly embodied the nation as its white majority wished to imagine it, their suffering and sacrifice worked to redeem the American cause in Vietnam and restore national honor. This chapter explains this phenomenon through close attention to the POW experience in North Vietnams prisons.

This chapter introduces the law of war crimes including: its historic development, common legal issues such as identifying an armed conflict, and the specific offences constituting war crimes. As for the historic emergence of war crimes law, the chapter looks at the evolution of humanitarian law – on which war crimes law is based. The chapter discusses the key principles of humanitarian law (distinction, proportionality, etc), the challenges of regulating warfare, the emergence of individual criminal responsibility (i.e. war crimes), and the evolution of war crimes in non-international armed conflicts. As for ‘armed conflict’, the chapter discusses common challenges in identifying the character of the armed conflict (international or non-international), for example in situations of invitation, national liberation, proxy forces, and transnational conflict. The chapter reviews the requirements to qualify as an armed conflict – intensity of the conflict and organization of the parties. It then reviews specific illustrations of war crimes, including: crimes against non-combatants (killing, sexual violence, experiments, and so on); attacks on prohibited targets (for example, historic monuments, hospitals, and so on); and attacks likely to inflict disproportionate civilian harm compared to the anticipated military advantage; prohibited weapons; and prohibited methods of warfare.

The ICC launched in 2002 to judge cases against individuals accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. It is unique among international institutions in this book in that it imposes its obligations upon individual persons rather than governments. This chapter shows the powers and limits on the authority of the ICC to punish people for large-scale atrocities. The practical power of the ICC is shaped by both the difficulty of apprehending people and the active work of those who wish to remain insulated from accountability.

The final substantive chapter of the book looks at how all these rules are implemented and enforced, and what mechanisms exist to hold violators of the law accountable for their acts. Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions requires states to ‘ensure respect’ for the rules of IHL, which is achieved through a range of measures such as education of the armed forces and civil society in the rules of IHL and entrenching the rules in domestic legislation. The chapter describes the roles of the ICRC, Protecting Powers and the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. The development and content of international criminal law are examined, including individual responsibility for war crimes, lesser violations of IHL, crimes against humanity and genocide, and the concept of command responsibility is explained. The growth in international and hybrid criminal tribunals is noted, as well as the roles played by the United Nations and other organisations in encouraging adherence to the rules of IHL. Finally the chapter examines mechanisms for implementation, enforcement and accountability in non-international armed conflict.

Pursuing German and Japanese war criminals and gaining compensation for survivors were high on the agenda of the victorious Allies after 1945. Enthusiasm, however, waned considerably and unforgivably in the context of the Cold War and partial restoration of pre-war elite networks. Long-term continuities in business–government networks in the coordinated economies of Germany and Japan meant that some of those who had been charged with war crimes – and/or those whose wealth derived at least in part from activities associated with the war – figured prominently in major post-war scandals. Over time, however, those directly tainted with pre-1945 crimes and practices begin to retire and die off. Moreover, the export orientation of both countries, combined with other aspects of the globalisation of business, finance, and markets, also changed the composition and dynamics of elite networks. This happened more rapidly and thoroughly in Germany than in Japan, owing to Germany’s greater dependence on exports; its central role in the European Union; and its greater openness to foreign imports and investment. German corporate governance therefore experienced more far-reaching reform than its Japanese counterpart. For many of the same reasons, Germany has made greater strides towards coming to terms with its pre-1945 past than Japan.

This chapter discusses the development and application of international humanitarian law (IHL) and its interrelationship with human rights law. It further examines this special relationship, which is of particular importance for the protection of civilians, especially where the applicability of IHL is contested or where IHL constitutes an exception to certain rights, such as the right to life, or fails to prevent and/or provide effective remedies for violations. The chapter seeks to identify the scope of application of IHL and demonstrate the degree to which the two can be reconciled. Moreover, a special case is made for the law applicable in situations of military occupation whereby human rights are subordinate to IHL. Despite this subordination, in practice because international human rights tribunals are not mandated to apply humanitarian law they necessarily interpret and enforce the rights of the victims on the basis of the rights found in their respective statutes. As a result, the jurisprudence of human rights tribunals is not always consistent with IHL. Yet, such tribunals are hard pressed to accept jurisdiction over situations which would otherwise be resolved on the basis of IHL alone. This chapter therefore goes on to discuss the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by human rights tribunals.