ABSTRACT

International judicial efforts to confront state crime have grown significantly in the last 20 years. Building on precedents established by the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, in the 1990s the United Nations (UN) began using special tribunals to adjudicate claims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Lebanon. In 2002, the UN took a further step by inaugurating the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a permanent, independent global court with jurisdiction over these crimes as defined by the Rome Statute (UN 1998).