Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: Prosecuting the Crime Against Humanity of Apartheid: Never, Again

by | Oct 1, 2019 | AYIH, AYIH 2018

Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: Prosecuting the Crime Against Humanity of Apartheid: Never, Again

Authors Christopher Gevers

ISSN: 2521-2621
Affiliations: Lecturer, School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Source: African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law, 2018, p. 25 – 49

Abstract

Despite being declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, and being the subject of a convention signed by more than half of the world’s states to demand its punishment (the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid), there has never been a single prosecution of the crime against humanity of apartheid committed in South Africa. This paper interrogates the commitment of an ‘invisible college of international (criminal) lawyers’ never to prosecute apartheid, both at Rome in 1998 and more recently in the case of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative and International Law Commission to produce a specialised convention on crimes against humanity. It argues that at best the ‘symbolic’ inclusion of apartheid in the last-mentioned signifies a commitment once again never to prosecute this crime against humanity (this time at the national level), and at worst discloses the racial politics of international criminal law that render the prosecution of crimes committed by the West or in its name not only untimely, but unthinkable.

Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: Domestic Guidance for International Criminal Justice: Lessons from South Africa

by | Oct 1, 2019 | AYIH, AYIH 2018

Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: Domestic Guidance for International Criminal Justice: Lessons from South Africa

Authors Max du Plessis

ISSN: 2521-2621
Affiliations: Senior Counsel KwaZulu-Natal Bar (Ubunye Chambers), and Associate Tenant, Thulamela Chambers, Johannesburg and Doughty Street Chambers, London. Honorary Research Fellow, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Associate Fellow, Chatham House London, and Adjunct Research Fellow, Law Futures Centre Griffith University
Source: African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law, 2018, p. 8 – 24

Abstract

The proposed Crimes Against Humanity Convention (CAHC) is an important development, particularly at a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) is under increasing pressure. Important questions have been raised, including whether such a convention is truly needed, whether it is politically feasible, and whether some of the draft provisions should be modified. In this article, the author considers the questions raised, and proposes answers from an African and realist perspective, having litigated some of the international criminal justice cases before South African courts. The author contends that international criminal justice, particularly at a time when the ICC is beset by troubles, may best be achieved through domestic efforts at accountability. The drafters of the CAHC should thus take meaningful account of the domestication of international criminal justice, and the lessons to be learnt from national systems that have found themselves at the forefront of the very debates that have animated the drafters of the CAHC, and the Rome Statute before it. If those lessons are to be taken seriously — including the lessons generated by African states and their courts — then the draft CAHC might be improved and some of its provisions sharpened.

Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: The Birth and Development of the Crimes Against Humanity Convention

by | Sep 21, 2019 | AYIH, AYIH 2018

Draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention: The Birth and Development of the Crimes Against Humanity Convention

Authors Richard J Goldstone

ISSN: 2521-2621
Affiliations: None
Source: African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law, 2018, p. 1 – 7

Abstract

The concept of crimes against humanity has its origin in the response to the atrocities committed in 1915 by the Turkish Army against the Armenian people. In 1945 it found its way into the London Agreement in terms of which the Nuremberg Tribunals were established to prosecute the Nazi leaders for the war crimes commit-ted by them. Since then, crimes against humanity have been recognised in customary international law and are reflected in international conventions establishing war crimes tribunals. The drafting of a United Nations Convention devoted to the suppression of crimes against humanity has reached an advanced stage.