UN General Assembly recognizes need for an international criminal court

The London Agreement and Charter created the Nuremberg Tribunal to prosecute leading European Axis figures for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It helped establish...

The Allied occupation authorities established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Like Nuremberg, it developed postwar criminal law while prosecuting only defeated powers, leaving...

The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It recognized genocide as an international crime and called for an international penal...

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister A.N.R. Robinson asked the UN General Assembly to consider an international court, initially to address international drug trafficking. The proposal reopened wider...

Security Council Resolution 827 established the ICTY after reports of grave violations in the former Yugoslavia. The ad hoc tribunal revived international criminal prosecutions, but its creation by...

The International Law Commission completed a draft statute for an international criminal court. Its work followed the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and helped shift the debate from a...

Resolution 955 created the ICTR to prosecute genocide and other serious violations committed in Rwanda in 1994. Rwanda voted against the resolution, objecting in part to the tribunal’s limits on the...

The General Assembly established a Preparatory Committee to produce a widely acceptable treaty text. Negotiations covered jurisdiction, complementarity, prosecutor independence, Security Council...