Crimes Against Humanity: Definition, Elements & Law

Few categories of international crime carry the moral and legal weight of crimes against humanity. Unlike ordinary domestic offences, they are not aimed at a single victim but at a population — killed, enslaved, tortured or persecuted not because of who they individually are, but because they belong to a group that a state or organisation has decided to attack on a mass scale. The law responds by treating such conduct as an offence against humanity as a whole, prosecutable regardless of where it occurs, who commits it, or what position the perpetrator holds.

Every element of the definition — the "widespread or systematic attack," the "civilian population," the "State or organizational policy," the knowledge requirement — exists to draw a precise line between an atrocity the international community may reach and an ordinary crime that remains a matter for domestic courts alone. This article walks through that architecture: how the crime developed from Nuremberg to the Rome Statute, how Article 7 defines it today, how international tribunals have interpreted each of its eleven categories, where the new UN treaty negotiations stand, and where Pakistan sits in relation to a body of law it has not yet formally joined.

Contents

1. What are crimes against humanity?

Crimes against humanity are serious violations of fundamental human dignity — murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, persecution and similar acts — committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of that attack. The defining feature is not any single violent act but the context in which it occurs: an individual killing is murder under domestic law, but the same killing becomes a crime against humanity when it forms part of a broader campaign of violence against a civilian population, carried out pursuant to a State or organisational policy.

This contextual requirement is what elevates the offence from domestic criminality to a matter of international concern. It reflects a shift from a state-centred international legal order, the classical structure described in our article on the Sources of Public International Law, to one that recognises the protection of civilian populations, even from their own government, as a matter transcending national sovereignty.

2. Historical development

Nuremberg and the war nexus

The phrase circulated in nineteenth-century condemnations of slavery and colonial violence, and found an early quasi-legal anchor in the Martens Clause of the 1899 Hague Convention. Its first significant use in a diplomatic instrument came in the joint declaration of France, Great Britain and Russia in May 1915, condemning the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as "crimes against humanity and civilisation" — a declaration that produced no prosecutions but established the vocabulary.

Formal codification came with the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Article 6(c) defined crimes against humanity to include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and persecution on political, racial or religious grounds.

Crucially, the Nuremberg Charter tied the crime to a war nexus — these acts could be prosecuted only if committed in connection with crimes against peace or war crimes. This was less a matter of legal principle than political compromise among the Allied powers, several of which were wary of endorsing a tribunal empowered to review a state's treatment of its own population outside international armed conflict. The practical consequence at Nuremberg was significant: Nazi persecution of German Jews before September 1939 largely fell outside the Tribunal's reach.

Tokyo and the Cold War dormancy

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, established in 1946 to try Japanese wartime leaders, adopted a broadly similar framework, again linking atrocity prosecution to the conduct of the war. Its contribution to the doctrinal development of crimes against humanity as a distinct category was slight; the Tokyo judgment leaned far more heavily on conventional war crimes and crimes against peace. For the four decades that followed, the concept survived in the vocabulary of international law — affirmed in the 1950 Nuremberg Principles and in the 1968 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity — but produced almost no prosecutions. Cold War politics made an international tribunal unthinkable.

Decoupling the crime from armed conflict: ICTY and ICTR

The decisive break came with the ad hoc tribunals of the 1990s. Article 5 of the ICTY Statute retained a nominal link to armed conflict, but the Appeals Chamber in Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić (Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction, 2 October 1995) held that customary international law no longer required any such nexus for crimes against humanity. The jurisdictional limit in the Statute, the Chamber reasoned, was a restriction the Security Council had chosen to impose, not a requirement of general international law. This is widely regarded as the moment the crime was freed from its Nuremberg-era constraint.

The ICTR Statute abandoned the war nexus entirely — the Rwandan genocide occurred outside any international armed conflict. In its place, however, Article 3 of the ICTR Statute introduced its own limitation, requiring that the attack be committed on national, political, ethnic, racial or religious grounds: a general discriminatory-intent requirement not found in the Nuremberg formulation and not carried into the Rome Statute.

The Rome Statute: consolidation

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted on 17 July 1998 and in force since 1 July 2002, represents the modern consolidation of customary international law on this crime. Article 7 abandons both the Nuremberg-era armed conflict nexus and the ICTR's general discriminatory intent requirement, retaining a discriminatory element only for the specific act of persecution. In doing so it reflects the settled recognition that mass atrocities committed in peacetime are as grave a violation of international law as those committed in war.

3. Definition under Article 7 of the Rome Statute

Article 7 provides the most authoritative and frequently applied definition in modern international law. Under Article 7(1), a crime against humanity means any of the enumerated acts "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack." Article 7(2)(a) then defines the attack itself as a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of those acts against any civilian population, "pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack."

The definition is best understood as having two distinct components, and prosecutors and judges analyse them separately.

The contextual threshold, or "chapeau." This is the element that elevates an ordinary domestic crime into a crime against humanity. Without it, even a brutal killing remains a matter for domestic criminal law; isolated or random acts of violence, however serious, do not qualify. The chapeau exists precisely to keep the international crime narrow and reserved for atrocities carried out on a genuinely collective scale.

The underlying offence. This is the specific criminal act — murder, torture, rape, persecution, and so on — that the accused is alleged to have personally committed, ordered or otherwise participated in.

A conviction requires proof of both: the specific underlying act, and its inextricable link to the broader contextual attack.

4. Elements of crimes against humanity

Establishing individual criminal responsibility generally requires the prosecution to prove six things:

1. that an attack directed against a civilian population existed;
2. that the attack was widespread or systematic;
3. that it was carried out pursuant to a State or organisational policy;
4. that the accused's conduct formed part of that attack;
5. that the accused knew his or her conduct was part of the attack; and
6. that the accused committed one of the enumerated underlying acts with the intent required for that specific offence.

Each contextual component is examined in turn below.

5. The contextual element in detail

Attack against a civilian population

An "attack" does not require the use of military force. It is a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of Article 7(1) acts against a civilian population. The ICTY Appeals Chamber in Prosecutor v. Kunarac et al. (12 June 2002) clarified that the population targeted must be predominantly civilian, and that the presence of some combatants — including those hors de combat — does not deprive it of its civilian character. The Special Court for Sierra Leone in Fofana and Kondewa similarly held that civilians must be the primary object of the attack.

Widespread or systematic

This is a disjunctive requirement — the prosecution need establish only one. "Widespread" refers to the massive scale of the attack and the multiplicity of its victims; "systematic" refers to the organised nature of the violence, reflecting a policy or pattern rather than a series of unconnected, spontaneous acts. Kunarac remains the central authority on both terms, and confirms that a single act by a single perpetrator can qualify where it forms part of the wider attack.

The State or organisational policy element

The underlying acts must further a State or organisational policy — a requirement designed to exclude random, unconnected criminality. Two points of genuine controversy sit inside this deceptively short phrase.

First, how organised must a non-state group be? In Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga (ICC Trial Chamber, 7 March 2014), the Court held the requirement can be satisfied by non-state armed groups possessing sufficient organisational structure and hierarchical command to implement a policy of mass violence. The debate had been framed four years earlier in the ICC's decision authorising the Kenya investigation, where the majority took a broad view of "organizational" while Judge Hans-Peter Kaul dissented, warning that reading it loosely would collapse the distinction between international crimes and ordinary organised criminality. The majority view has prevailed, but Kaul's objection remains the sharpest statement of the risk.

Second, is the policy element customary law at all? The ICTY in Kunarac held that no policy or plan requirement exists under customary international law. Article 7(2)(a) of the Rome Statute nonetheless imposes one. The result is a real divergence between the ad hoc tribunal jurisprudence and the ICC's treaty text — a point worth flagging in any answer that cites both bodies of case law.

Knowledge of the attack

The mental element requires that the accused intended the specific underlying act and knew that his or her conduct formed part of the wider widespread or systematic attack. The accused need not share the purpose or motive behind the attack. In Tadić, the ICTY made clear that personal motives — sadism, greed, private revenge — do not negate liability, so long as the accused knew the broader context. Nor must the accused know the details of the attack or every aspect of the policy behind it.

6. The eleven categories of underlying acts

Article 7(1) lists eleven categories, at sub-paragraphs (a) to (k). The list is exhaustive: an act falling outside these categories, and outside the residual "other inhumane acts" clause, cannot constitute a crime against humanity however serious. International jurisprudence has given each considerable interpretive depth.

Murder

The intentional killing of a person, or the infliction of grievous bodily harm likely to cause death, linked to the broader widespread or systematic attack.

Extermination

Extermination involves killing on a mass scale, including through indirect means such as deliberately depriving a population of access to food and medicine. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić, the ICTY clarified that extermination does not require the specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy a protected group as such — the point that distinguishes it from genocide even where both arise from identical conduct.

Enslavement

Enslavement means the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person, including in the course of trafficking. In Kunarac, the ICTY applied this to the continuous sexual abuse and deprivation of autonomy suffered by women held in detention, treating such conduct as enslavement rather than confining the offence to traditional chattel slavery.

Deportation or forcible transfer

Both involve coerced displacement without grounds permitted under international law, but they are legally distinct. In Prosecutor v. Milomir Stakić, the ICTY Appeals Chamber held that deportation requires displacement across a de jure state border, or in certain circumstances a de facto border, while forcible transfer occurs within a single state's boundaries.

Imprisonment or severe deprivation of physical liberty

This category addresses arbitrary mass detention carried out without due process, in violation of fundamental rules of international law.

Torture

Torture requires the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering on a person in the accused's custody or control. The Rome Statute's definition departs deliberately from the UN Convention Against Torture: it does not require that the perpetrator act in an official state capacity, allowing the offence to reach torture by non-state actors. It also omits the Convention's requirement of a specific purpose such as obtaining information.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence

The ICTR in Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu (2 September 1998) defined rape as a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed under coercive circumstances, moving away from earlier mechanical definitions borrowed from domestic law. Article 7(1)(g) enumerates rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilisation as distinct underlying acts, reflecting a deliberate effort to give sexual violence the specificity it had historically been denied in international criminal law.

Persecution

Persecution is the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law, by reason of the identity of the group targeted. In Prosecutor v. Zoran Kupreškić et al. (14 January 2000), the ICTY described it as a systemic denial of humanity, distinguished from other underlying acts by its requirement of discriminatory intent — the one point at which the Rome Statute retains a discriminatory-grounds element. Under Article 7(1)(h), persecution must also be committed in connection with another Article 7 act or another crime within the Court's jurisdiction.

Enforced disappearance

The arrest, detention or abduction of persons by a State or a political organisation, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to disclose the fate or whereabouts of those concerned, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period.

Apartheid

Inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Other inhumane acts

A residual clause covering acts of a character similar to those enumerated, which intentionally cause great suffering or serious injury. Both the Special Court for Sierra Leone, in the AFRC and RUF proceedings, and the ICC in Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen (4 February 2021), relied on this clause to characterise forced marriage as a distinct crime against humanity — the imposition of a conjugal association without genuine consent, treated as sufficiently distinct in its harm from sexual slavery to warrant separate recognition.

7. Major international criminal cases

Related authorities on state-level responsibility for the same underlying conduct are discussed in our articles on State Responsibility in International Law and the ICJ's Top 10 Landmark Decisions.

8. Crimes against humanity vs genocide vs war crimes

These three categories are often prosecuted together, arising from the same facts, but they protect different interests and require proof of different elements.

The extermination/genocide distinction drawn in Krstić shows how close these categories come on the facts while remaining legally distinct: the same killings may satisfy extermination without proving the specific intent to destroy a protected group that genocide demands.

9. Individual criminal responsibility and modes of liability

Individuals may be liable for physically committing a crime against humanity, or for ordering, soliciting, inducing or aiding its commission. Tribunals have also relied on the doctrine of Joint Criminal Enterprise, developed in Tadić and applied in cases such as Krstić, to convict participants in a common plan even where they did not personally carry out the underlying acts. The ICC has taken a different route, developing control-over-the-crime and co-perpetration theories under Article 25(3) rather than adopting JCE.

Superior and command responsibility

Article 28 of the Rome Statute makes military and civilian superiors liable where they knew, or should have known, that forces under their effective control were committing crimes, and failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within their power to prevent or repress them, or to submit the matter to the competent authorities.

The ICC Appeals Chamber's judgment of 8 June 2018 in Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is the leading modern authority and is frequently misdescribed. The majority did not impose a strict causal-link requirement between the commander's failure and the underlying crimes. It found that the Trial Chamber had applied an unreasonably demanding standard in assessing whether Bemba took "all necessary and reasonable measures" within his material power, and acquitted him after giving fuller weight to the practical constraints facing a remote commander disciplining troops deployed in a foreign state. The decision drew a strong joint dissent and has been widely criticised as raising the practical bar for command-responsibility convictions.

Immunities

Official capacity — including that of a sitting head of state — is no substantive defence to a charge of crimes against humanity; Article 27 of the Rome Statute says so expressly. The ICTR affirmed the principle in convicting former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, and the ICC Appeals Chamber in the Al-Bashir Jordan Referral judgment of 6 May 2019 held that customary international law affords no personal immunity to an incumbent head of state before an international court.

That holding should be stated with care. It concerns proceedings before international courts. Before domestic courts, the ICJ's judgment in Arrest Warrant (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium) (2002) remains authority that serving foreign ministers and comparable officials enjoy full personal immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction, whatever the gravity of the alleged offence. The two lines of authority are not in conflict, but conflating them is a common error.

10. Jurisdiction, complementarity and prosecution

States hold primary jurisdiction over crimes against humanity committed within their territory or by their nationals, on ordinary territorial and nationality principles — the framework set out in our article on State Jurisdiction in International Law. The ICC operates as a court of last resort. Under Article 17, the principle of complementarity means the Court asserts jurisdiction only where a state with primary jurisdiction is "unwilling or unable" genuinely to investigate or prosecute. The ICC is not designed to displace national justice systems but to step in where they fail.

For non-party states such as Pakistan, the Court's jurisdiction can nonetheless be engaged in two ways: by a UN Security Council referral under Article 13(b), and where conduct occurs on the territory of a State Party even if committed by a non-party national.

11. Universal jurisdiction and domestic prosecution

The prohibition of crimes against humanity is widely regarded as a peremptory norm of customary international law — a jus cogens prohibition generating obligations erga omnes, owed to the international community as a whole. Customary international law is generally accepted to permit universal jurisdiction over such crimes, allowing a domestic court to prosecute regardless of where the crime was committed. Whether that permission extends to proceedings commenced in the accused's absence remains contested; most state practice requires the accused's presence on the territory, and the "pure" universal jurisdiction in absentia asserted in some earlier European legislation has largely been rolled back.

The International Court of Justice addressed a closely related obligation in Questions relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal), judgment of 20 July 2012, finding that Senegal's failure to investigate former Chadian President Hissène Habré breached its obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture and confirming aut dedere aut judicare as a binding obligation under that Convention. The Court expressly declined to rule on whether an equivalent obligation exists for crimes against humanity as a matter of custom. The judgment is therefore authority on torture specifically, not a freestanding customary rule for crimes against humanity at large — precisely the gap the proposed convention is designed to close.

12. The ILC Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment (2019)

Unlike genocide and, to a considerable extent, war crimes, crimes against humanity currently lack a dedicated global treaty. This creates a genuine impunity gap, particularly around peacetime inter-state cooperation, extradition and mutual legal assistance. In 2019 the UN International Law Commission finalised its Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, placing obligations to prevent and to punish at the centre of the proposed regime in Draft Article 3, and adopting the Article 7 Rome Statute definition largely unchanged.

The Draft Articles have not been free of controversy. Draft Article 5, which prohibits returning individuals to territories where they would face a danger of crimes against humanity, has proven especially contentious. States have argued it stretches non-refoulement — historically rooted in refugee law — beyond its established boundaries, and some have warned that so expansive an obligation may generate political resistance to the treaty as a whole. A separate academic debate concerns whether forced marriage should be elevated from the residual "other inhumane acts" clause to a standalone enumerated act, on the basis that the residual clause obscures the distinct, gendered nature of the harm.

13. The road to a Crimes Against Humanity Convention

The Draft Articles have now fed into a formal treaty-making process. On 4 December 2024 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 79/122, convening a Conference of Plenipotentiaries to elaborate and conclude a legally binding instrument on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. The timetable is deliberate and slow:

• First Preparatory Committee session: 19–30 January 2026, New York, meeting alongside a working group convened to facilitate consultations on the draft articles.
• Deadline for states' formal amendment proposals: 30 April 2026, for inclusion in a compiled text prepared by the Secretary-General.
• Second Preparatory Committee session: April 2027.
• Diplomatic Conference: three consecutive weeks in 2028, followed by three consecutive weeks in 2029, with an additional session possible.

If concluded, this would be the first dedicated global treaty on crimes against humanity — closing a long-standing gap in a legal architecture that already has treaties on genocide and on torture but none addressed to this crime as a whole.

14. Relevance to Pakistan

Pakistan is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, and neither the Pakistan Penal Code nor any special statute incorporates crimes against humanity as a distinct offence. The practical consequence is jurisdictional rather than moral: a Pakistani court applying ordinary criminal law can try individual acts such as murder, abduction or wrongful confinement, but has no statutory basis on which to try the contextual "widespread or systematic attack" element that transforms those acts into a crime against humanity under international law. Nor does Pakistan have implementing legislation permitting the exercise of universal jurisdiction over the offence.

At the January 2026 Preparatory Committee sessions, Pakistan expressed support for the proposed treaty while urging that any convention reflect universal consensus and avoid what it characterised as the politicisation of international justice — a position consistent with concerns several states have raised over provisions such as Draft Article 5.

The most immediate domestic point of contact with this body of law, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has come through the customary principle of non-refoulement, in the context of the 2026 deportation proceedings affecting Afghan nationals. In July 2026 the Peshawar High Court directed the federal government to decide the cases of roughly 140 Afghan families and individuals by reference to the principle of non-refoulement, restraining deportation for sixty days or until that decision. It applied the same approach in August 2026 to petitions by two Afghan journalists and a former Afghan army officer, again referring the matter to the Ministry of Interior rather than granting relief outright.

The doctrinal shape of these orders is worth noting precisely, because it is easy to overstate. The Court did not hold that non-refoulement confers an enforceable domestic right against deportation. It treated the principle as a consideration the federal government is obliged to apply when deciding applications for asylum, sojourn or temporary stay, and restrained removal only while that decision is pending. That is a meaningful but modest engagement with customary international law — and it is the same principle that Draft Article 5 of the ILC Draft Articles would harden into a treaty obligation, which is why the Pakistani position in the New York negotiations and the Peshawar litigation are two faces of a single question.

15. Challenges in prosecuting crimes against humanity

The absence of a dedicated global convention remains the most fundamental difficulty. Unlike genocide, crimes against humanity are prosecuted through a patchwork of tribunal statutes, customary international law and domestic legislation, without a uniform treaty basis for extradition and mutual legal assistance — the very gap the ILC Draft Articles and the current treaty process are intended to close.

A second difficulty lies in proving the contextual elements. Establishing that an attack was widespread or systematic, that it was carried out pursuant to an organisational policy, and that the accused knew of that broader context typically demands an extensive evidentiary record: patterns of conduct across time and geography, command structures, and the testimony of numerous witnesses. Katanga expanded the crime's practical reach to non-state groups but did nothing to simplify that burden.

Immunity and enforcement add a further layer. Even where the substantive law is clear — Al-Bashir and Kambanda confirm that official capacity is no defence — enforcement against sitting or former heads of state depends on state cooperation, arrest and political will that is frequently absent. Al-Bashir himself travelled to several States Parties without being arrested.

For states such as Pakistan, outside the Rome Statute and without domestic legislation, the complementarity framework offers little practical avenue absent a Security Council referral. Customary doctrines — universal jurisdiction, non-refoulement — remain the principal points of domestic engagement.

16. Frequently asked questions

What are crimes against humanity in simple terms?

They are serious attacks on human dignity — murder, torture, enslavement, rape, persecution and similar acts — committed not in isolation but as part of a large-scale or organised campaign against a civilian population, where the perpetrator knew his conduct formed part of that campaign.

What is the difference between crimes against humanity and genocide?

Genocide requires proof of a specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. Crimes against humanity require only knowledge that the act formed part of a widespread or systematic attack, and the victim population need not share any particular identity. The same killings can amount to extermination as a crime against humanity without meeting the genocidal-intent threshold, as Krstić illustrates.

Must an armed conflict exist for crimes against humanity to be committed?

No. The Nuremberg Charter required a nexus to war, but the ICTY Appeals Chamber in Tadić (1995) held that customary international law no longer does, and Article 7 of the Rome Statute contains no such requirement. The crime can be committed entirely in peacetime.

Does "widespread or systematic" require proof of both?

No. The requirement is disjunctive. Proof of either the massive scale of the attack, or its organised and patterned character, suffices.

Can a non-state group commit crimes against humanity?

Yes. Article 7(2)(a) refers to a "State or organizational policy," and the ICC in Katanga confirmed that a non-state armed group with sufficient organisational structure and hierarchical command can satisfy the requirement. How much organisation is enough remains debated, following Judge Kaul's dissent in the Kenya authorisation decision.

Is there a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity?

No. Article 29 of the Rome Statute provides that crimes within the Court's jurisdiction are not subject to any statute of limitations, and the 1968 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity states the same rule for its parties.

Is Pakistan bound by the law of crimes against humanity?

Pakistan is not a party to the Rome Statute and has no implementing legislation, so its courts cannot try the offence as such. But the prohibition is widely regarded as jus cogens customary international law, which binds all states regardless of treaty membership. The gap is one of enforcement machinery, not of obligation.

When will the new Crimes Against Humanity Convention be adopted?

Not before 2028 at the earliest. Resolution 79/122 scheduled a Diplomatic Conference for three weeks in 2028 and three weeks in 2029, following Preparatory Committee sessions in January 2026 and April 2027. Adoption would then be followed by signature and ratification, so entry into force is realistically some years beyond that.

17. Common misconceptions

"Crimes against humanity require an armed conflict." They do not. The war nexus was a Nuremberg-era political compromise, severed in custom by Tadić and absent from Article 7.

"Crimes against humanity are just a lesser form of genocide." They are a separate crime with a different structure. Genocide is narrower in its protected groups and demands specific destructive intent; crimes against humanity are broader in the populations they protect but require a contextual attack that genocide does not.

"A single act cannot be a crime against humanity." It can, provided it forms part of the wider widespread or systematic attack and the accused knew this. Kunarac is the authority.

"The victims must belong to a particular ethnic or religious group." Only persecution carries a discriminatory-grounds requirement. The other ten categories protect any civilian population.

"Bemba introduced a causation requirement into command responsibility." It did not. The Appeals Chamber majority faulted the Trial Chamber's assessment of the measures reasonably available to a remote commander, not the absence of proof of causation.

"Al-Bashir abolished head-of-state immunity everywhere." It held that no such personal immunity exists before an international court. Before domestic courts, Arrest Warrant (ICJ 2002) remains the governing authority for serving high officials.

Conclusion

The law of crimes against humanity has travelled a long way from the compromise struck at Nuremberg — from a crime prosecutable only alongside a war, to one recognised under Article 7 of the Rome Statute and a substantial body of ICTY, ICTR, ICC and hybrid tribunal jurisprudence as an atrocity in its own right, prosecutable in peace or in war, and attaching to non-state actors as readily as to states.

What remains outstanding is not the substance of the crime but its institutional architecture: the absence of a dedicated global convention comparable to those governing genocide and torture. The process now under way, moving from the ILC's 2019 Draft Articles through Preparatory Committee sessions toward a Diplomatic Conference in 2028 and 2029, may finally supply that missing instrument — or may founder on precisely the provisions, such as Draft Article 5, that make it worth having. For jurisdictions such as Pakistan, which currently engage with this body of law only indirectly through customary principles, the coming years of negotiation will sharpen a choice that has so far been possible to defer: continued reliance on custom, or accession to a treaty-based regime with obligations attached.

Primary authorities and further reading

• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 17 July 1998, in force 1 July 2002 — Articles 7, 17, 25, 27, 28, 29
• Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg), 8 August 1945 — Article 6(c)
• Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia — Article 5; Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda — Article 3
• Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, 26 November 1968
• International Law Commission, Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity (2019) — Draft Articles 3 and 5
• UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity — General Assembly Resolution 79/122 of 4 December 2024
• Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, Case No. IT-94-1-AR72, ICTY Appeals Chamber, 2 October 1995
• Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, 2 September 1998
• Prosecutor v. Kupreškić et al., Case No. IT-95-16-T, 14 January 2000
• Prosecutor v. Kunarac et al., Case Nos. IT-96-23 & IT-96-23/1-A, ICTY Appeals Chamber, 12 June 2002
• Prosecutor v. Krstić, Case No. IT-98-33-A, ICTY Appeals Chamber, 19 April 2004
• Prosecutor v. Stakić, Case No. IT-97-24-A, ICTY Appeals Chamber, 22 March 2006
• Kaing Guek Eav alias "Duch", Case No. 001/18-07-2007/ECCC/TC, 26 July 2010
• Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga, ICC-01/04-01/07, Trial Chamber II, 7 March 2014
• Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, ICC-01/05-01/08 A, Appeals Chamber, 8 June 2018
• Prosecutor v. Omar Al-Bashir (Jordan Referral), ICC-02/05-01/09 OA2, Appeals Chamber, 6 May 2019
• Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen, ICC-02/04-01/15, Trial Chamber IX, 4 February 2021
• Questions relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2012, p. 422
• Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 2002, p. 3

For connected topics, see our articles on State Responsibility in International Law, State Jurisdiction in International Law, the Principle of Non-Intervention in International Law, Cybercrime and International Law, and the Sources of Public International Law.