The Security Council and international criminal law

Abstract

There is no agreed definition of international criminal law, but the term is a useful way of describing those aspects of public international law and domestic law that are concerned with crimes having an international aspect or dimension. It therefore ranges from the important, but generally unexciting, topic of mutual assistance in criminal matters to the more gripping subject of ‘international crimes’. That term is a convenient way to describe those offences that are the concern of every state because they corrode society. Even when the crime is committed on behalf of a state, international law places individual criminal responsibility on those who commit them. Furthermore, international law generally allows states to prosecute international crimes regardless of where they are committed or the nationality of the accused (universal jurisdiction). The acts constituting international crimes are not a new invention but as old as mankind, but, with the notable exception of piracy, it was only in the twentieth century that a concerted international effort was made to confront them. We will look at how the Security Council has tried to deal with international crimes, inevitably in a piecemeal way.