War Crime: Individual act constituting a serious violation of the laws of war

There are international laws of war that say what people can do during wars and what they cannot do. A war crime breaks these rules.

Today, these rules are international laws called the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention.

Definition

To be a war criminal, a crime must be part of a plan or has to be committed against protected persons and must be committed during a war.

In international armed conflicts, only prisoners of war, wounded and sick enemy fighters, shipwrecked survivors, and enemy civilians are protected persons. Nationals under their own authority as well as neutral civilians living in a belligerent state and allied citizens as long their states maintain diplomatic relations with a belligerent power are not protected persons under the law of war in the same conflicts.

In non-international armed conflicts, persons not taking part in hostilities are protected regardless of nationality.

The idea of what a "war crime" is has changed over time. For example, during World War II, the strategic bombing during World War II was not a war crime. Now it is.

In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was created. Its goal is to look into and, if possible, punish people for war crimes. When the ICC was created, it came up with a longer list of war crimes. For example, its list was the first one to include types of sexual abuse like forcing women into sexual slavery.^pp. 8–10

Types of war crimes

Here are some examples of crimes that the ICC lists as war crimes.

General war crimes

These are war crimes whether they are committed against enemy soldiers or protected civilians or neutral persons.

Torture
Causing "great suffering" (severe physical or mental pain) on purpose
Doing medical experiments on a person that will hurt them
Destroying or stealing property
Taking hostages
Using chemical weapons, biological weapons, or other weapons that are illegal under international law
Keeping a person in jail, sentencing them, or executing them without a trial
Willful attacks on neutral persons, property, or territory

Sexual war crimes

These are war crimes whether they are committed against enemy soldiers or protected civilians or neutral persons.

Rape
Sexual slavery
Forcing a person to be a prostitute
Forcing a woman to get pregnant
Forcing a person to get sterilized
Sexual violence (which includes all other types of sexual abuse and sexual assault)

War crimes against protected civilians

War crimes against protected civilians include:

Attacking protected civilians, killing them, or destroying their property
Making an attack that is obviously going to kill and injure many protected civilians
Forcing protected civilians to leave their home countries
Attacking places like religious buildings, schools, and hospitals, which have nothing to do with war
Starving protected civilians on purpose, as a way of making war
Forcing protected children to become soldiers
Mutilating a protected civilian (for example, by cutting off an arm or hurting them in other ways that will show forever)

War crimes against enemy soldiers

War crimes against enemy soldiers include:

Hurting or killing a person who is unable to fight (for example, because they are injured or sick)
Hurting or killing a person who has surrendered
Hurting or killing a person who is clearly a military medic or a chaplain
Tricking enemy soldiers by using a flag to signal a truce, then attacking
Using flags, insignia, or uniforms worn by enemy soldiers or the United Nations as a disguise while attacking
Killing prisoners of war

War crimes against neutral persons

War crimes against neutral persons include:

Hurting or killing a person who is a peacekeeper
Hurting or killing a person whose country is not participating in an armed conflict (for example, a neutral warship in belligerent waters)

Examples of war crimes

This table shows some examples of war crimes.

WAR		PERPETRATOR
Incident	Type of war crimes	Ordered or Committed By	Notes
World War I (1914-1918)		All major belligerents
Chemical weapons in World War I	Use of chemical weapons	Ordered by all major belligerents	Throughout World War I, all major belligerents employed chemical weapons in combat in violation of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in international conflicts.
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)		Empire of Japan
Nanjing Massacre	Mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war; rape; torture; robbery; setting buildings on fire	Committed by the Imperial Japanese Army	For six weeks after invading and taking over Nanjing, China, Japanese soldiers committed war crimes. About 200,000 people died or were killed.
World War II (1939-1945)		Nazi Germany
Invasion of Poland	Mass murder of civilians, including hospital patients; attacking refugees and civilian buildings	Committed by the German Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS)	The Nazis killed about 150,000–200,000 Polish civilians, including over 20,000 in mass executions by mobile death squads, and about 6,000 hospital patients.
World War II (1939-1945)		Empire of Japan
Attack on Pearl Harbor	Attacking neutral territory and murder of neutral persons	Committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy	On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft and submarines attacked a United States naval base at Pearl Harbor without a state of war and without explicit warning, killing 2,403 people, destroying 188 U.S. aircraft, and sinking eight battleships.
World War II (1939-1945)		United States
Biscari massacre	Murder of prisoners of war	Sergeant Horace T. West; Captain John T. Compton	During the Allied invasion of Sicily, American soldiers killed 76 Italian and German prisoners of war. West was found guilty in an American court martial; Compton was found not guilty.
Vietnam War (1955-1975)		North Vietnam
Massacre at Huế	Mass murder, beatings, and torture of civilians	Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam	The Battle of Huế began on 31 January 1968, and lasted a total of 26 days. During the months and years that followed, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. Victims included men, women, children, and infants killed under North Vietnamese occupation of Huế, South Vietnam. The estimated death toll was between 2,800 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war, or 5–10% of the total population of Huế. Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes buried alive. Many victims were also clubbed to death.
The Troubles (1968-1998)		United Kingdom
Actions in Northern Ireland	Torture; killing suspects (including a civilian) without trying to arrest them first	Members of the British Army	In the 1970s, members of the British Army commonly used torture, including waterboarding, on prisoners in Northern Ireland. They also started a "shoot to kill" policy, where they would shoot and kill suspects without trying to arrest them first. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that this was illegal.
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)		Iraq
Iraqi chemical attacks against Iran	Use of chemical weapons	Ordered by Saddam Hussein; led by Alī Ḥassan al-Majīd ("Chemical Ali")	Throughout the 1980s, Iraq used poison gases to attack Iran. A Dutch war crimes tribunal also found a Dutch businessman guilty for selling Iraq chemical weapons.
War in Uganda (1985 – today)		Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
Many events	Mass murder; kidnapping; forcing children to be soldiers and sex slaves; attacking civilians	Led by Joseph Kony	The LRA is a rebel group in Uganda, started in 1987. Since 1987, the LRA has forced about 60,000 – 100,000 children to be soldiers, and made about 2 million people in central Africa have to leave their homes. In 2002, Kony ordered the LRA to start attacking civilians. The ICC has indicted Kony for 21 different war crimes. The Court has also indicted four other LRA leaders.
War in Darfur (2003 – today)		Sudan
Many events	Mass murder of civilians; destroying civilian villages; rape; making civilians leave home; looting	Led by Omar al-Bashir; committed by Sudanese military, police, and militia	The al-Bashir government has committed many crimes against people in Darfur who are not of the Arab, Muslim majority. In 2014, the United Nations estimated that 300,000 had been killed and more than 1.5 million had been forced to leave their homes. The ICC has indicted al-Bashir and five other leaders with war crimes.

Photo gallery

The destroyed Belgian city of Leuven in 1915 by German occupation troops
British troops blinded by poison gas during the Battle of Estaires
Japanese soldiers bury Chinese civilian prisoners alive during the Nanjing Massacre
Nazi invasion of Poland destroyed this Polish city, including civilian buildings
Mass grave of Polish officers killed in the massacre at Katyn Forest
Seamen at Kaneohe Naval Air Station decorate the graves of their fellow neutral sailors killed at Pearl Harbor
Lidice massacre in 1942 after its destruction by the Nazis
Bits of tattered clothing, sandals and slippers are examined by South Vietnamese women who lost relatives in the 1968 Huế massacre
Iranian victims of the Iraqi chemical attack on Sardasht
A Sudanese family sitting in a refugee camp
Some countries (red on this map) have not agreed to be part of the ICC. This makes it harder for the ICC to punish war crimes in those countries

Related pages

References

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