Often people, including lawyers, the media, government officials and members of the military, use the term “war crime” to refer to any wrongful act committed during an armed conflict. But the term has a specific legal meaning, and it is important to understand it in order to ensure that our laws and practices reflect a proper understanding of the nature of the offense.
War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law and are defined by various treaties and customary international law. These violations include rape, torture, extrajudicial killings, recruitment of child soldiers, and other abuses that violate the principles of proportionality, humanity, and distinction between civilian and military targets in armed conflicts. In addition, some war crimes are crimes against humanity, a more general category of behavior that includes acts such as genocide, mass atrocities, and other serious human rights violations.
The concept of war crimes emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Before that time, it was generally understood that the horrors of war were a part of warfare and that the actions of commanders and political leaders could often lead to brutal treatment of enemy non-combatants or prisoners of war. But whether these actions triggered prosecution depended on who won the war. Victorious governments rarely tried their own people for war crimes, and so the concept of war crimes became a way to identify and prosecute wartime violations of international humanitarian law in courts outside domestic criminal jurisdictions.
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