International Crimes and Gross violations of Human Rights Lectures
Professor Alette Smeulers (2021-2022)
University of Groningen
Lecture 1: ‘International crimes and GHRV’
In the end of the course an exam question could be, with everything you’ve learned, explain
how we can we best stop and prevent international crimes.
After WWII: never again!
Second World war, modern countries committing such horrific crimes. People started
thinking, this should not happen again.
Some measures taken:
• League of Nations ended and was replaced by the United Nations aiming at ending war
and to not get into a third world war (until now succeeded).
• Importance of international peace and security, also in UN Charter, Chapter 7 (SC can
take measures based on Chapter 7 if something is a threat to the peace and security)
• Acknowledgement of international Human Rights
• Prosecution of the perpetrators (Nuremberg trial, Tokyo trial)
• In Europe: economic cooperation: ECSC = European Coal and Steel = forerunner of EU.
Important for this course are three areas of law:
1. International human rights law
2. International humanitarian law
3. International criminal law
,Contextual crimes
Crimes are committed in a context, so you need to understand the context first.
So, there are three contexts:
1. Political context: usually is political upheaval, struggle, or conflict. To gain or maintain
political power. Examples would be an armed conflict, democratization process
(government takes over etc. so a power vacuum) and move from democracy to
dictatorship, also often happens with violence.
2. Ideological context: ideology to create a better world, rigid vision of the world, us versus
them (distinguish/two groups/two worlds), violence legitimized, enemies dehumanized
(easier to use violence) and say they had orders from a higher authority.
3. Institutional/social context: a lot of international crime are committed by people by a
centralized power, strict and functional hierarchy, visible ranks, strict discipline,
obedience, loyalty and conformism, separate rules, code of honor and authority to give
orders.
• An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or
territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the
government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in once calendar.
• Armed conflict is also referred to as state-based conflict, as opposed to non-state
conflict, in which none of the warring parties is a government.
→ International armed conflict is between states.
→ Non-international armed conflict is conflict within a state (civil wars)
Trends in war fare
We see a number of armed conflicts rose from q950s to 1992 and then declined sharply until
recently. A lot of battle related deaths and type of conflict, conflict by region.
,Explanations:
Most conflicts are internal wars, especially since 1945 (end of II World War)
There is a power vacuum and power shift:
- Decolonization
- Independence
- Proxy wars during cold war (USA v Soviet-Union)
The dark side of democracy: many people in the West believe that democracy is the best
system and believe that democratization would happen automatically.
- Overthrowing a colonial power or dictator
- Power vacuum
- Different fractions fight for power
- Ethnic hatred (if politicized)
Aims of rebel groups
• Overthrow government; or
• Gain power
• Create their own state (separatism) or;
• Join other state (unification)
• Sometime, pure material gain
Are rebel groups always rebel groups or terrorists or freedom fighters? It's in the eye of the
beholder. Someone’s freedom fighter can be another’s terrorist. Sometimes freedom
fighters also need to use violence, so it can be hard to distinguish these things.
Changing nature of war
- Nowadays we have a more internal armed conflict.
- Type of conflicts are also different from the past.
- More civilian casualties (10-15% beginning 20th century, 50% WW II and now 80-90%).
- Involvement of many different groups/militias
- Privatization (PMC = private military companies, soldiers who fight for payment)
- Widespread use of child soldiers
Consequences
Criminalization of warfare; so many groups involved in war
→ Small armed groups: band of thugs, ill disciplined, violent
→ Criminal opportunities are huge
→ Groups are used by political leaders
→ Criminal groups become war heroes
, Lecture 2: ‘war, war crimes and My Lai’
My Lai was covered up for a year. A year later a journalist found out a bit of the truth and
shared this with the world. This is how it eventually came out. So was during the Vietnam
War, killings were carried out by Charlie Company, the mission was to kill and destroy. Over
500 people were killed.
How can we explain My Lai + what dynamics played a role here:
• Type of warfare (guerrilla): not between two state armies, but guerilla, not knowing
exactly who the enemy was. In international humanitarian law there is a clear distinction
between combatants and civilians, here this distinction was hard to make. In My Lai it
was all civilians. Fear of not knowing who was who? Who was the enemy?
• Overall aim and mission: kill and destroy mission. They were told: go to that village and
kill everyone. Misinformation played an important role, they were going into the village
ready for a fight, but not a single shot was fired on the part of the village inhabitants.
Soo, they were confronted with a situation which was completely different.
• Dehumanization enemy: us versus them perception. In a war this can be a dangerous
mechanism. Us is own group and them is the enemies, you start to see the enemy as
dangerous. You start to dehumanize the enemy. They started to give names to the
enemies which were derogating, saying they were all the same. Makes it much easier to
kill someone else.
• Role of leaders: Calley was the only one prosecuted. He played a dubious role here.
• Obedience: they got the orders; they were on a kill land destroy mission. At a moment
they realized that there were only old people and woman and children. So, no Vietnam
soldiers in the village. But at a moment they started shooting at that triggered it. ‘You
know what you need to do + start shooting’ then everyone followed.
• Conformity: others are doing it. We think of ourselves as strong individuals who do what
we want. But a lot of our behavior is looking what other people do and copying that. So if
everybody starts shooting, you think ‘oh we need to start shooting’.
• De-individuation in military: institutional concept, soldiers are part of an army, the
institution of the army reduces people as individuals and makes them part of something
bigger. They kind of ignore the individual identity but focus on the collective identity.
• Effect of training: hammering this role into the soldiers. The training is verry important,
trained to kill. Military training, research shows after World War I that 50% of the
American soldiers shoot back when they are shooted at. Most soldiers fled or froze. This
makes an army ineffective, so they changed the training to make the soldiers shoot back
when they are shot at. Then it became an automatic response.
• Emotions: a popular leader died a few days before from Charlie Company, these
triggered feelings of revenge. Then you have powerful gun in your hands = makes it
dangerous.
• Numb - brutalized by war: get brutalized by everything going on around them, it is
horrible to see a death person. In war you see a lot off horrible things, a lot of death
people, at a moment you need to distance yourself from this all. All try to be tough.
• Ideology: these soldiers went there not to kill innocent people. These soldiers went to
the Vietnam war to save the world. This is what ideology does to you. They were
supposed to be the good guys but ended up committing horrendous crimes.
