A Proposed Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity

In October 2021, the United Nations General Assembly’s Sixth Committee will consider articles for a proposed treaty on crimes against humanity. Proponents argue a new treaty is needed because existing treaties ban only certain crimes against humanity such as torture and forced disappearance, but do not cover mass murder campaigns carried out without genocidal intent or forced displacement that occurs outside of armed conflict. The Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity were written by the International Law Commission to fill this gap. Supporters of the treaty hope their efforts could soon lead to an international convention where nation states formally adopt the treaty. If so, the treaty would take its place alongside the Genocide and Geneva Conventions, which outlawed genocide and war crimes.

In a recent article in Just Security, Professor Leila Sadat discusses the importance of adopting the treaty:

A new treaty on crimes against humanity could dispel the notion that it is only genocides that deserve international sanction and attention and shift the normative conversation away from the crime of genocide—which is very difficult to prosecute and prove—to crimes against humanity. A case like The Gambia v. Myanmar would thus potentially turn not on whether officials in Myanmar could be shown by clear and convincing evidence to have had “genocidal” intent, but on the suffering and displacement of more than 900,000 Rohingyas brutalized by the commission of atrocity crimes, particularly since August 2017. Given the enhanced role of national systems in the enforcement of international criminal law in increasing numbers of cases brought under universal jurisdiction and through transitional justice mechanisms, this would be an extraordinary step forward in the fight against impunity. It would also be a powerful symbolic completion of the legacy of the Nuremberg trials, where crimes against humanity first materialized in positive international law as Article 6(c) of the International Military Tribunal’s Charter.

Read more about the proposed treaty in Sadat’s article, “Towards a New Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity: Next Steps.”