Abstract
Crime against humanity is one of international crimes. The “validity” of this crime as a criminal offence under International Criminal law can be traced to the Rome Statute, which by virtue of Article 7, makes it an offence. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a court saddled with the responsibility of interpreting and also bringing to book those who have violated international criminal laws. The paper therefore examines how the broad couching of article 7 has brought complexity into the jurisprudence of “crime against humanity” and how it has created interpretation problems; not only to the court, but to victims and accused persons. A good law must be concise, precise and must not be too broad. This article, therefore, argues that an appraisal of Article 7 will go a long way in clarifying the ambiguity created by this article.
Highlights
The concept of “crime against humanity” is as old as humanity (Theodorakis & Farrington, 2013)
Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court explains that the concept of crime against humanity includes “wide spread or systematic attack directed against civilian population, with the knowledge of the attack”: Antonio (2002)
They provide as follows: 7(1) For the purpose of the statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack
Summary
The concept of “crime against humanity” is as old as humanity (Theodorakis & Farrington, 2013). In order to do an anatomic analysis of Article 7, we shall first of all have a brief background knowledge of the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court before examining the jurisprudence of the wordings of the Article 7 with regard to the following keywords, vis-à-vis, “systematic”, “knowledge of the attack”, “wide spread”, “civilian”, “organization”, and “policy requirement”. These would solidify the claim that the broad couching of Article 7 has plagued its meaning with coherence unlike the clarity in the definition of genocide and war crimes. The paper examines article 7 of the Rome Statute and argue that the re-appraisal of the Article would go a long way in providing a clearer interpretation and definition of crime against humanity
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