13 Genocide and International Criminal Tribunals

Abstract The concepts of ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ essentially arose as a reaction to the crimes committed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Perhaps even more than crimes against humanity, genocide has continued to be associated in popular imagination with the Holocaust. It is somewhat paradoxical therefore to observe that the events which came to best illustrate this crime were in fact so neglected in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. This chapter discusses the indictment presented by the prosecution to the tribunal against perpetrators of crimes during the Holocaust, the contribution of the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda to the law of genocide, and the International Criminal Court’s approach to genocide.