ABSTRACT
Following the adoption of the 1948 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention)1 the General Assembly also invited the International Law Commission (ILC) ‘to study the desirability and possibility of establishing an international judicial organ for the trial of persons charged with genocide’.2
The ILC studied this question at its 1949 and 1950 sessions and concluded that a court of that nature was both desirable and possible.3 Subsequent to the ILC’s report the General Assembly established a committee to prepare proposals relating to the establishment of such a court. The committee first prepared a draft statute in 19514 and a revised draft statute in 1953,5 but the Assembly decided to postpone consideration of the matter pending the adoption of a definition on aggression. Despite periodical consideration of the issue since 1953, it was in December 1989, in response to a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General by Trinidad and Tobago regarding the establishment of an international court with jurisdiction over the illicit trafficking in drugs, that the General Assembly once more requested the ILC to resume work on the creation of an international criminal court.6 Following the shocking first reports from the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
