Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of legislative provisions
- List of abbreviations
- PART I Establishment of the tribunals
- PART II Jurisdiction
- 4 Territorial, personal and temporal jurisdiction
- 5 Subject-matter jurisdiction generally
- 6 Genocide
- 7 Crimes against humanity
- 8 War crimes
- PART III Substantive and procedural aspects of prosecution
- PART IV Organisation of the tribunals
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Subject-matter jurisdiction generally
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of legislative provisions
- List of abbreviations
- PART I Establishment of the tribunals
- PART II Jurisdiction
- 4 Territorial, personal and temporal jurisdiction
- 5 Subject-matter jurisdiction generally
- 6 Genocide
- 7 Crimes against humanity
- 8 War crimes
- PART III Substantive and procedural aspects of prosecution
- PART IV Organisation of the tribunals
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The subject-matter jurisdiction (or jurisdiction ratione materiae) consists of the crimes that the tribunals are authorised to prosecute. The ICTY has four such provisions, entitled: Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (art. 2), Violations of the laws or customs of war (art. 3), Genocide (art. 4) and Crimes against humanity (art. 5). The ICTR has three provisions, entitled: Genocide (art. 2), Crimes against humanity (art. 3) and Violations of article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II (art. 4). The SCSL has four provisions, entitled: Crimes against humanity (art. 2), Violations of article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II (art. 3), Other serious violations of international humanitarian law (art. 4) and Crimes under Sierra Leonean law (art. 5).
Two categories of crimes are common to the three statutes, crimes against humanity and ‘war crimes’. While each of the statutes has a provision entitled ‘crimes against humanity’, the actual definition differs from one instrument to the other. Each also contains provisions that fit broadly within the generic category of war crimes, although they are titled and defined somewhat differently in the three statutes. The ICTY and ICTR statutes contain a provision concerning genocide, but this category of crime is omitted in the Statute of the SCSL. Judges at the ad hoc tribunals have sometimes described the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts as encompassing ‘universally condemned offences’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The UN International Criminal TribunalsThe Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, pp. 151 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006