ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on normative theory, and how the people “ought” to act in global politics. Some regimes are led by pathological leaders who commit incomprehensible atrocities. During World War Two, civilians were victims of unprecedented atrocities, and in recent decades, new types of warfare have emerged in which innocent civilians have become the principal victims. The idea for bringing individuals to trial for war crimes dates to the end of World War One. The trials of the Germans at Nuremberg after World War Two were unprecedented because they were conducted by an international tribunal. In the early 1990s, Hutu militants in Rwanda accused the Tutsi minority of intensifying the country’s economic and social woes and of aiding a Tutsi rebel group, and they put into effect a plan to annihilate the country’s Tutsis. UN-backed tribunals have been controversial regarding their efficiency, funding, and limitation to crimes committed in specific time-frames and conflicts.
