Reassessing the concept and classification of war crimes in modern Law understending

Abstract

War is inevitable, and its consequences devastating with lots of casualties and damages experienced. The purpose of the article is to study the concept and classification of war crimes. It has been emphasized that it is impossible to organize timely detection, effective pre-trial investigation and fair trial of war crimes cases without understanding the essence of the indicated illegal actions and the specifics of the mechanism of their commission. Analysis of the provisions of international legal acts, regulatory legal acts of Ukraine and foreign countries has been carried out. Those regulations define the concept of “war crimes”, their features and system. It has been found that there is no actual definition of war crimes in international criminal law, similar to the criminal law of Ukraine. It has been offered to understand war crimes as criminal offenses that encroach on the established procedure for performing active duty and are committed by members of the armed forces, conscripts and career reservists during reserve training, as well as their accomplices and other persons specified by law. It has been established that the criminalistics classification of war crimes allows us to form the appropriate forensic methods, to choose the right direction, means, tactics and investigation plan. The authors have accomplished criminalistics classification of war crimes according to a mixed criterion, which is stipulated by such criminal and forensic significant features of the indicated criminal offenses, as the characteristics of the offender’s personality, direction, situation and methods of commission.