INTRODUCTION

International criminal law by its very nature focuses on punishment of serious international offences as its main objective. It differs from national criminal law by the attention it pays to offences which not only wrong a State or a particular community but offend the international community as a whole. However, its raison d’etre is intricately connected to the pursuit of international peace and security. It is but one solution to the general problem of how to address past human rights violations in order to restore the damaged society and ensure no repetition of these undesirable events in that society or elsewhere in the world. It sits side by side with, complements and competes with other mechanisms for the restoration of international peace and security including amnesties, truth commissions, exclusionary measures against those responsible for past wrongs (in particular lustration laws) and reparations to the victims.

Not unsurprisingly international criminal law finds its roots in the development of norms designed to limit the effects of war. These are nearly as old as war itself. Evidence of such norms can be found in the historical records of for instance the Chinese, the Mayas and the ancient Greeks. Later in history, principles on the regulation of war were codified in national military manuals, but ultimately being a matter of universal concern, the laws of war have developed internationally through the practice and customs of States and collective codification in international treaties designed for this specific purpose. In modern history the laws of war were most recently extensively codified in the four Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War of 1949. It is in the last fifty years that international criminal laws have expanded their frontiers to other internationally reprehensible offences such as genocide, crimes against humanity, apartheid and offences against diplomats and UN personnel. The Geneva Conventions provide for a general obligation on States to prosecute grave breaches of these conventions before their own courts. The substance of international criminal law has been refined on the international level, and its enforcement has in the past generally been left to individual States.