Crimes against humanity and the International Criminal Court.

Abstract

This article discusses the need for a specialized convention for the investigation, prosecution and punishment of crimes against humanity. To this end and as a point of reference, it addresses the norms contained in Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The main purpose is to subject this provision to a rigorous critical analysis and to compare its performance with the definition of the crime proposed in the Draft International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity, prepared by an international group of experts, in which the author of this article participated. A second issue to be addressed, close to the one proposed, is the effective capacity that the ICC has or should have to prevent and prosecute crimes against humanity. This problem affects one of the fundamental pillars of (international) criminal law: its potential deterrent effect.