Nikhil Raghav Reddy

18010253

"Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by
punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be
enforced”, stated in the Trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military
Tribunal, Nuremberg. The above statement is a testament to the vast judicial powers held by
the ICL in comparison to other branches of international law. Atrocity crimes have far-
reaching and long-lasting consequences for any civilization. The difference between causing
and averting these sad events is frequently a choice between preserving or destroying national
potential. It's also vital to recognise that these crimes aren't unavoidable: they need a
coordinated effort, an organisational context, and much planning and preparation. As a result,
the idea of bolstering preventative action has gained traction, and it is now encapsulated in
the emergent concept of 'responsibility to prevent.' International courts and tribunals help to
achieve this goal by putting an end to impunity for previous atrocities. The impact of this
contribution is maximised by focusing inquiries and prosecutions on the highest levels of
leadership. International criminal law is a relatively new field of public international law that
has evolved from a myriad of perspectives. War crimes, for example, are based on
international humanitarian law, but genocide and crimes against humanity are based on
international human rights law. Individual criminal culpability for international crimes is
addressed by international criminal law, which is a component of public international law. It
is based on the notion that international legal duties can be imposed on persons. Treaties,
customary international law, and basic principles of law are all sources of ICL, as are other
fields of public international law. In contrast to other areas of public international law, the
rights that guarantee a fair trial, particularly the principle of legality, required determining
that the crime was sufficiently defined and unambiguous to provide the offender a fair
warning that his or her action was criminal. National courts, hybrid courts, and international
courts can all enforce the ICL, but it was predominantly enforced by the former. Though the
prospect of a perpetrator being tried by a competent tribunal of the State in whose territory
the acts were perpetrated, or by an international penal tribunal, was envisaged in the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was signed
in 1948. As a judicial institution, the ICC lacks its own police force or enforcement body; as
a result, it relies on international cooperation for assistance, particularly in making arrests,
transferring arrested persons to the ICC detention centre in The Hague, freezing suspects'
assets, and enforcing sentences. The Court has a cooperation agreement with the United
Nations, despite the fact that it is not a UN agency. When a scenario falls outside of the ICC's
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Nikhil Raghav Reddy
18010253

jurisdiction, the UN Security Council might refer it to the ICC and grant it jurisdiction. This
has been done in the Darfur (Sudan) and Libyan crises. One of the ICL's enforcement
divisions is international criminal tribunals. The Nuremburg Tribunal, the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, among others, enforced ICL
at the international level in the previous century. All of the tribunals listed above were
established to address a specific conflict. It should be noted that, unlike national courts,
international criminal tribunals do not have a criminal code or penal laws, but instead have
statutes that cover the offences over which they have jurisdiction. The statutes do not attempt
to be comprehensive list of all international crimes. International criminal tribunals have
developed this corpus of law by bringing to justice those most guilty for international crimes,
while also contributing to the standardisation of rules that protect the accused's human rights.
World law is a set of rules that govern how nations and states interact with one another in
order to sustain international peace and prosperity. International law exists to maintain world
order and peace, as well as to resolve countless disagreements between nations/states and
individuals and to defend fundamental rights. International law can impact local legislation,
and international law can sometimes form part of domestic law. International Criminal Law
has a number of general principles that serve as the foundations and conditions for holding
individuals criminally responsible for international crimes such as genocide, war crimes,
crimes against humanity, aggression, and other crimes against humanity's peace and security.
The objective of international criminal with accordance of the international criminal court
and tribunals of passing judgement that are applicable to individuals and not nations make it
unique from other branches of law.

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https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/documents/uicceng.pdf