There seems to be no end to the number of atrocities perpetrated in total impunity even though the signs of large scale attacks are clear across the world, particularly in Africa. As human rights are systematically violated, they continue to be subject to insufficient instruments of protection and insufficient definitions of crimes included in some national legislation.
It is essential to remember the 1999 controversial decision made by London judges to extradite the late general Pinochet to Spain in order for him to be tried for crimes against humanity and genocide. At the time, it was a landmark decision for the difficult road toward the establishment of a transnational, operational and irreversible justice, evoking the concept of ” universal jurisdiction.” The effects of this have persisted for a long time. Political and judicial systems around the world have found universal jurisdiction too aggressive a principle to develop beyond its use in London. In addition, a number of national laws, although on paper criminalize mass atrocities (genocide, crimes against humanity), give very few guarantees that they will be enforced.
At a time when the embryonic emergence of a universal justice, represented by the institution of a permanent International Criminal Court, restarts the debate on the functioning of instruments and mechanisms ensuring the application and control of international norms, the cause supported by human rights organizations representing victims and all complainants, must be regarded as sacred so that universal legality is valorized.
This cause that is often being neglected could serve as a basis for rebuilding a judicial heritage, a jurisprudence that the blissful initiative of Nuremberg had left to the whole of humanity to protect it from depraved powers and nihilists.
In order to safeguard this invaluable inheritance, it will be necessary first of all to review principles and methods of incrimination of all forms of human rights violations, in internal laws and to consider inevitable criminal provisions in Conventions and other international legal instruments so that we can finally see an end to impunity.
It is not about alleging the guilt of all those wandering monsters who flout the international community, but thinking about an innovative approach that aims to review the legal doxology and the promotion of a universal philosophical and moral ideal respecting and protecting efficiently all rights of the human being.
– Cheikh Sidya Diouf, Senegalese Counselor at Law
The international situation of the Law on Human Rights appears to be far away, especially in armed conflicts international laws do not seem to exist.I fully agree with the great expert on International Humanitarian Law Mr . Marco Pizzorno said that to expand the education and dissemination of humanitarian law in the territories of war. The people involved should know what are the crimes against humanity in order to be able to defend and to not commit crimes..
The spread of the international rules are needed to combat the ideologies and defend the rights of all people. Mr Marco Pizzorno praises international policy of President Obama, but calling for the enlargement of the dissemination of humanitarian law to protect the life of the people and the soldiers themselves who become the only goal in hostilities. Respect and dissemination of rules sno the only acceptable result.
Respect for human rights exists only if the rules are distributed and used as daily bread, and remember not only when the television waves the flag of the United Nations.
Thanks for your comments. The International Humaniterian Law has a long way to go before we can see change in its development.
Hopefully , advocacy groups like CICC will continue to raise their voices for the victims not to be forgotten.