ABSTRACT
The effective protection of human rights requires that individuals who commit serious crimes (such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes), amounting to serious human rights violations, must be held individually criminally responsible for those crimes without any distinction based on official capacity. This helps to end impunity, deter the future commission of international crimes and deter serious violations of human rights. Although the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, in Resolution 260 of 9 December 1948 adopting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), invited the International Law Commission (ILC) ‘to study the desirability of establishing an international judicial organ for the trial of persons charged with genocide’, it was not possible to establish a permanent international criminal court until 17 July 1998, 50 years after the UDHR1 and the Genocide Convention, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (hereinafter ‘Rome Statute’ or ‘Statute’)2 was adopted in Rome by 120 votes against 7 (Iraq, Israel, Libya, China, Qatar, the USA, and Yemen) and 21 abstentions.
