for suspects, and judge them or hand them over to another state for trial.”378
Moreover, all signatories must take all available measures to ensure respect
for the Convention.379
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
Unlike grave breaches, war crimes are acts or omissions that also violate
IHL, but that are criminalized in international law.380 While grave breaches
should entail criminal consequences in domestic law, war crimes entail
criminal consequences in international law.381 As such, the Rome Statute
of the ICC, incorporated the aforementioned grave breaches as war crimes
together with other serious violations, including; intentionally directing
attacks against the civilian population, the deportation or transfer of all
or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this
territory, employing bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body,
and committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating
and degrading treatment.382 The Rome Statute also included a list of acts
that constitute crimes against humanity “when committed as part of a
widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”383
This list includes; murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population,
imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of
fundamental rules of international law, torture, the crime of apartheid, other
inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or
serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
In the Rome Statute the crime of apartheid refers to inhumane acts of a
character similar to other crimes against humanity “committed in the context
of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination
by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed
with the intention of maintaining that regime.”384 The 1973 International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
(Apartheid Convention) specifies that the crime of apartheid “shall include
similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as
378 Ibid., Article 146
379 Geneva Conventions, Common Article 1
380 Marko Divac O’berg, The absorption of grave breaches into war crimes law, International Review of
the Red Cross, Volume 91, Number 873, March 2009, page 164
381 Ibid., page 166
382 Rome Statute, Article 8
383 Ibid., Article 7
384 Ibid., Article 7(2)(h)
103
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