Crimes against humanity
Visualization of narrower problems
Nature
Crimes against humanity include acts committed against a group and inhumane acts committed against any civilian population. In this respect crimes against humanity is the wider concept, including in it the crime of genocide. In accordance with the [Nürnberg Principles] as formulated by the International Law Commission, crimes against humanity are the following: "Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against civilian populations, or persecution on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried out in execution or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime".
Background
Before the [London Charter] (1945), international law did not make acts classified as crimes against humanity illegal, unless they at the same time constituted war crimes [stricto sensu]. The basic principles sustained by the Nürnberg and Tokyo trials were unanimously confirmed by the [UN General Assembly Resolution 95(I)] (11 December 1946).
Incidence
In addition to war crimes, crimes against humanity have occurred as a result of the treatment of POWs and internees at the end of war. The Allied decision at the Conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam to transfer more than 14 million Germans from pre-war Poland, East Prussia, Pomerania, East Brandenburg, Silesia, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary resulted in the deaths of 2.2 million people, mostly women and children (since the men were prisoners of war). The Yalta agreement to use the labour of German POWs as "reparations in kind" and Allied decisions to use "surrendered enemy personnel" and "disarmed enemy forces" constituted a form of slavery achieved by removing POWs from the protection of the [Geneva Convention] through their reclassification. This procedure was terminated by the USA in July 1945, by the UK in July 1948 and by the USSR in 1956. Official estimates of POW deaths, exceed 1.2 million, mostly in the USSR.
Claim
During the 20th century, some 40 million people have died in international wars, but it is estimated that over 100 million have been killed by their own governments.
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Type
(C) Cross-sectoral problems