Article

Development of international criminal law : a long journey

Manoj Kumar Sinha

• ISIL yearbook of international humanitarian and refugee law, Vol. 11, 2011, p. 139-160

English

Attempting to trace a brief outline of the historical development of international criminal prosecution from the execution of William Wallace in 1305 to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998, Sinha chronologically establishes the major turning points in International Criminal Law (ICL). The author describes major events such as the attempts to codify the laws of war by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the failure of the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on the Enforcement of Penalties after the First World War, the struggles to establish an International Criminal Court in the inter-war period, the Nuremburg and Tokyo Tribunals following WWII, and the establishment of ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early 1990s. In his concluding remarks, Sinha argues that the Rome Statute of 1998 – establishing the International Criminal Court - was a natural conclusion to the processes established by the Nuremburg Tribunals as they interacted with post-Soviet geopolitical realignment and the international community’s response to both the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts of the 1990s. [Summary by students at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (IHRP)]

• ISIL yearbook of international humanitarian and refugee law / THE INDIAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
• ISIL yearbook of international humanitarian and refugee law [Vol. 11, 2011] / THE INDIAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW