Rome Statute Quotes

(1) military necessity (which permits the use of only that degree and kind of force, not otherwise prohibited by the law of armed conflict, that is required to achieve the legitimate military purpose of the conflict); (2) distinction (which requires discrimination between the armed forces and military targets and, on the other hand, non-combatants, civilians, and civilian targets); (3) proportionality (which requires that losses resulting from a military action should not be excessive in relation to the military advantage expected to be gained from the action); and, above all, (4) humanity (which forbids the infliction of suffering, injury, or destruction not necessary for the accomplishment of legitimate military purposes). The implications of these principles, and of more detailed prohibitions on weapons and tactics, are spelled out in military manuals issued by many States, such as The Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict issued by the UK Ministry of Defence in 2004. Serious violations of the laws of war, such as the deliberate targeting of civilian non-combatants or the wanton destruction of towns and villages, amount to war crimes, for which the perpetrators may be punished by national courts, or by an international criminal tribunal that has jurisdiction over the events in question. Such international tribunals have been established on an ad hoc basis following the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, and (in slightly different hybrid forms, as ‘internationalized criminal courts’—national courts with some international judges) for Cambodia, East Timor, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. There is also the permanent International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) established in 2002 under the 1998 treaty known as the Rome Statute. By the end of 2013 the ICC had exercised its jurisdiction in relation to seven conflicts, all of them in Africa, and was investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in other situations.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, wrote in 2006: “International humanitarian law and the Rome statute permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) ... or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).

Clare Short, who today poses as an anti-war warrior but was six years ago Blair's cheerleader-in-chief for bombing Yugoslavia. After the attack on Radio-Televizija Jugoslavenska she said, 'The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target'. Amnesty International pointed out 'intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects is a war crime under the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court'.

Precisely what magic Roman magicians had practised was, for a long time, not very clear to modern scholars. Rome officially disapproved of magic, and had done for centuries. Stand before the Twelve Tables, Rome’s most ancient and august legal code – already almost half a millennium old when Christ was born – and there, in beaten bronze, among the sober statutes about land disputes and inheritance procedures and the right height to which one should prune fruit trees, it was possible to see other laws, far stranger laws: laws that ruled against anyone who ‘enchants by singing an evil incantation’ or against any miscreant who ‘enchants away crops’.15 It was almost more alarming that Rome outlawed magic than it would have been if it had ignored it: official disapproval denoted official anxiety. ‘There is no one’, wrote Pliny the Elder, ‘who doesn’t fear being bound by evil curses.’16