welcome back everybody to our studies in international criminal law this lesson is going to start to talk about the next substantive crime within international criminal law so far we have covered the crime of genocide which is cited in article six of the Rome statute we've then looked at the crimes against humanity which refers to article 7 of the Rome statute and now we're going to talk about war crimes we're going to take an introduction to war crimes in this lesson examine a little bit of a historical background to the concept of War crimes before exploring
what war crimes uh exist today that that form part of the Corpus of international criminal law so as I said we're looking at the third substantive crime in international criminal law um the the regulation of war crimes the final one of which being the crime of aggression which is the newest of the four International crimes uh at least in terms of its addition to the Rome statute but of course is one of the oldest in terms of its history now the reason why we're taking an introduction to war crimes in this lesson as a an
examination of the historical development is because this is going to be something of an introduction to a different area of law in fact International humanitarian law which relates to the laws of war and this is obviously where war crimes originate at least in terms of you can you'll study the the the law relating to war crimes in a number of different areas it can form part of international humanitarian law it can form part of military law or weapons law it could also form part of the uh Law related to security and peacekeeping and even the
law of um International crimes of course so International humanitarian law is a branch of public international law just like IC is uh and it deals with uh conduct during armed conflicts now bro Broly we divide the regulation and the history of international humanitarian law into two major categories you have hag laws or the hag regulations and then you also have the Geneva conventions um when we talk about the hag regulations these were a series of treaties and an area of international humanitarian law which developed from around 1899 to 1907 some of the earliest developments of
international humanitarian law was in relation to the hag regulations the hag regulations concern themselves mainly with the use of weapons in Warfare as well as the conduct of military operations they also concern themselves with the distinction between combatants and non-combatants as well as the number of early rules relating to targeting principles so some of the points of reference at this initial juncture uh firstly International humanitarian law does not concern itself with the legality of going to war or whether or not a war is Justified or moral okay um that is the usad Bellum which is
a different area of law it can be a sort of a subcategory if you will or they are very closely related but that's the international law on the use of force that's a different area of law international humanitarian law however assumes that law that war exists and it also assumes that war is inevitable it doesn't try to regulate War by trying to stop it from happening it assumes that when it does happen however there are going to be certain rules that we have to follow in war in order to ensure the uh the least amount
of suffering uh unnecessary suffering as humanly possible that's what international humanitarian law seeks to do it seeks to protect those who are not part and are not fighting in a war non-combatants it SE to also protect those against some of the most horrific weapons in Warfare so the use of gas for example the use of white phosphorus in a lot of circumstances uh all of which uh or even the use of certain Munitions that are that are designed to cause the most suffering um those are outlawed in international humanitarian law it also relates to rules
of targeting so in what circumstances can a Target be lawful and under what principles should a Target be lawful all of which are concerned with International humanitarian law the largest development in international humanitarian law came at the end of the second world war with the Geneva conventions these are primarily primarily sorry concerned with civilians the protection of civilians as well as the protection of other non-combatants so civilians represent somebody a group of people who are non-combatants they are not part of the war the status of non-combatants as civilians is is examined in the Geneva conventions
but it also includes other non-combatants individuals who may have been soldiers but are representative as something of a o their combat so um sick wounded surrendered prisoners of War all of which represent no threat to an opposing military force and so the result of this is that they also have certain Protections in international humanitarian law the 1949 Geneva conventions that developed after the end of the second world war are obviously some of the most important documents in relation to the development of IHL uh they regulate the wounded and sick Armed Forces on land that's what
the first Geneva Convention does the second Geneva Convention in 1949 deals with the exact same problems but for law uh sorry for war at Sea the third Geneva conventions protects the prisoners of War protects prisoners of War provides protections for those who are considered to be PS and then finally the Fourth Geneva Convention is concerned with the protection of civilians including and in relation to also occupied territories so this is international humanitarian law today it is regulated through a number of different sources so if we're thinking about International humanitarian law we already have a series
of lessons that we're doing in conjunction with these on International humanitarian law so if you want to watch those those will give you more detail into this subject of course um they will be regulated however through the four Geneva conventions there are also two additional protocols to the Geneva conventions AP1 and ap2 there's technically three but the third is a little bit less important because it concerns things like military emblems etc etc there are various treaties and regulations which um which seek to either Outlaw or to regulate certain weapons so there's treaties for example on
cluster Munitions or on the use of white phosphorus the use of incendiary we weapons the use of chemical weapons etc etc and then there is also customary International humanitarian law the largest database of which that is kept is kept by the international committee for the Red Cross and the red crescent which um argues for the creation of or at least it it suggests that there exists a good few hundred different rules of international humanitarian law that have either passed from the treaty into customary international law or represent customary international law in and of itself self
