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9 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 575 (2010)
Crimes against Humanity: The Case for a Specialized Convention

handle is hein.journals/wasglo9 and id is 583 raw text is: Washington University Global Studies Law Review VOLUME 9 NUMBER 4 2010 CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: THE CASE FOR A SPECIALIZED CONVENTION M. CHERILF BASSIOUNI* In the past 100 years, more people have been killed in various types of conflicts and regime victimization than at any other time in history. Most of the victims are likely to fall within the meaning of crimes against humanity (CAH). Nevertheless, the international community has so far failed to adopt a specialized convention on CAH.2 During World War I (WWI) (1914-18), almost twenty million people were killed.3 The casualties were mostly combatants. Civilian deaths were largely an unintended consequence of war, though certainly there were war crimes when intentionally committed by combatants. During that conflict, one situation stood out: the estimated 200,000-800,000 civilian Armenians killed in 1915.4 In 1919, the Inter-Allied Commission (save for the U.S. and Japan) called for the prosecution of Turkish officials * Distinguished Research Professor of Law Emeritus and President Emeritus, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University College of Law; President, International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (Siracusa, Italy); Honorary President, International Association of Penal Law (Paris, France). 1. See Christopher Mullins, Conflict Victimization and Post-Conflict Justice 1945-2008, in 1 THE PURSUIT OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE: A WORLD STUDY ON CONFLICTS, VICTIMIZATION, AND POST-CONFLICT JUSTICE 67, 67 (M. Cherif Bassiouni ed., 2010). 2. See generally M. CHERIF BASSIOUNI, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION AND CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2011); LEILA NADYA SADAT, FORGING A CONVENTION FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY (2010). 3. See JOHN KEEGAN, THE FIRST WORLD WAR 422-23 (2000). 4. See generally JAMES BRYCE & ARNOLD TOYNBEE, THE TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1915-1916: DOCUMENTS PRESENTED TO VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODEN BY VISCOUNT BRYCE (2000). Turkey argues that these numbers are inflated and that the violence against Armenians was popular and spontaneous because the Armenians collaborated with the Russians during a war in which the latter were the enemies of Turkey. The ultimate truth in these competing allegations has never been established, but the number of Armenian casualties and the support of Turkish officials for what happened to them clearly reveals the Armenians to have been helpless victims. 575

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