ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that international condemnation of states allowing or promoting consensually reprehensible acts has not been achieved through recourse to a formal international legal system. It outlines some forces that provide a philosophical basis for a circumvention of practical problems. The chapter describes situations in which human rights procedures, not criminal proceedings, have effectively addressed normatively criminal acts by violative states. It discusses existing formal legal and human rights-based international developments and instruments which may eventually form part of a comprehensive approach to curtail state actions that are both crimes and human rights violations. The International Court of Justice, popularly called the World Court, was established under the Statute of the International Court of Justice, an annex of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945, and is the most important authority for the resolution of disputes between states. The chapter identifies three rights violations that are unequivocally crimes: enslavement, torture, and murder.
