ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on international criminal law and international criminal tribunals. Notwithstanding the loopholes and lacunas in substantive international criminal law, it remains one of the most useful tools available with which to respond to egregious violations of fundamental standards of humanity. International criminal law is often seen as a means of enforcing human rights, although the law of human rights and international criminal law are conceptually distinct. Human rights groups have, perhaps understandably, begun to use international criminal law in their work. This may be related to up-swing in enforcement possibilities for such law, which give it a concrete applicability that has been lacking in human rights law, at least in the past. The rules of international criminal law, particularly in relation to the "general principles" of criminal liability, such as the law relating to accomplices and defenses, were not particularly well defined prior to the 1990s.
