Aggression

63. Some delegations supported the inclusion of aggression or the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression among the crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the court. In this respect, it was noted that the question of the inclusion of this crime in the draft statute and the issue of the powers of the Security Council under article 23 of the draft statute were closely related. While recognizing that defining aggression for the purpose of the statute would not be an easy task, those delegations drew attention to article 6 (a) of the Nürnberg Charter, which, it was stated, reflected the position of the 20 States participating in the London Agreement as regards the principle of individual criminal responsibility for aggression and was part of existing applicable law, as well as to the Definition of Aggression contained in General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, to the definition proposed in the context of the ongoing work of the International Law Commission on the draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind and to the definition worked out by the Committee of Experts which had met in June 1995 under the auspices of the International Association of Penal Law, the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law. In their opinion, the United Nations, whose Charter enshrined the principle of the non-use of force and which had been created to save future generations from the scourge of war, could not, 50 years after the Nürnberg trial, exclude aggression from the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, thereby taking a retrogressive step and ignoring the contrary line taken by the International Law Commission in the context of its work on the draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind.