Crimes against humanity have often been committed as part of State policies, but they can also be perpetrated by non-State armed groups or paramilitary forces. Unlike war crimes, crime against humanity can also be committed in peacetime, and contrary to genocide, they are not necessarily committed against a specific national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Crimes against humanity appeared for the first time in a treaty in the 1945 Nuremberg Charter at the end of the Second World War, albeit with a different definition than today.
Since the 1990s, crimes against humanity have been codified in different international treaties such as the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1993), the Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda (1994) and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998). The Rome Statute provides the most recent and most expansive list of specific criminal acts that may constitute crimes against humanity.
Unlike other human rights violations, war crimes do not engage State responsibility but individual criminal responsibility. This means that individuals can be tried and found personally responsible for these crimes....<<<Read More>>>...