ABSTRACT
Organizing a judicial and investigative landscape as fragmented as the multi-national and multi-institutional one currently being established in relation to alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine raises practical challenges of documentation and securing evidence. In this evolving context fraught with uncertainty, it is worth reflecting on potential lessons of the past. In this chapter, we argue that the experience of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) operative between 1943 and 1948 provides a valuable, if limited, ground for comparison. In the Second World War, leaders of the German government and military forces were indicted as war criminals by Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland for crimes committed in those countries. These indictments, based on municipal and international law, were formally endorsed and supported by the UNWCC and formed part of a broader allied effort through the UNWCC that saw at least 10,000 Axis personnel tried in over 2,000 domestic courts and military tribunals. This chapter puts particular emphasis on the UNWCC’s “pre-trial” function including fact finding, evidence-gathering and cooperation with domestic authorities. It argues that this effective cooperative framework for investigation of war crimes can serve as a useful precedent for today’s demands of international criminal justice.
