Is it valid to argue that "crimes against humanity" exist?

Question

Beginning in 1945, various government officials of the losing nations were prosecuted at Nuremberg [etc.] for "crimes against humanity".

Who and how are "crimes against humanity" determined?

What if some society or group does not agree that a particular action is a "crime against humanity"? Should its members and/or leaders be held responsible for such "crimes" anyway?

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Comment: This is inextricably intertwined with the question of when it is moral and ethical for an outside power/people/nation to interfere in the affairs of another nation/power/people.

Another, more distantly related question might reasonably be whether the concept of evolution applies to collectives of intelligent beings such as nations, peoples, and societies. {I would argue that if you strictly apply the concepts of evolution to such collectives, then it is simply evolution functioning as it should when one such collective interferes in the affairs of another.}

Examples: Iraq and Darfur

In essence, Texican argues that there is no such thing since any sovereign nation may define its laws in such way as to exclude genocide, etc. from the definiation of crimes. Easy 2 Be Me, on the other hand, offers information without interpretation or opinion.

So far, no best answer, nor even any good ones.

2 days later -- no useful responses. :-(

Answer 1

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in The Hague (Netherlands) and the Rome Statute provides for the ICC to have jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum states that crimes against humanity "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion." The definition of what is a "crime against humanity" for ICC proceedings has significantly broadened from its original legal definition or that used by the UN.

Article 7 of the treaty stated that:

For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
(a) Murder;

(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;
(j) The crime of apartheid;
(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
According to the Commentary on the Rome Statute:

[Crimes against humanity] are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion. On the other hand, an individual may be guilty of crimes against humanity even if he perpetrates one or two of the offences mentioned above, or engages in one such offence against only a few civilians, provided those offences are part of a consistent pattern of misbehavior by a number of persons linked to that offender (for example, because they engage in armed action on the same side or because they are parties to a common plan or for any similar reason.) Consequently when one or more individuals are not accused of planning or carrying out a policy of inhumanity, but simply of perpetrating specific atrocities or vicious acts, in order to determine whether the necessary threshold is met one should use the following test: one ought to look at these atrocities or acts in their context and verify whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of an inhumanity, or whether they instead constitute isolated or sporadic acts of cruelty.

Answer 2

Well, here's the thing. The VA is government-run health care, and therefore it is a valid comparison. The points you bring up are correct, like the mortality rates issue, and it's also true that this system would be rather different than the VA. What that local pastor doesn't realize is that there's not a single veteran with the VA that doesn't want it, not one of them would give it up. The standard of care is actually better with the VA than it is in your average hospital. Compared survival rates may not be the best way to do it, but there's certainly other ways to look at the private system and the VA.

Answer 3

Foreign and/or ex-post-facto laws are B.S. Sure, the defendents at Nuremberg deserved to hang, but to go through the formality of making up "after-the-fact" laws and trying them in an international court was silly.

You cannot break a law that didn't exist within your nation's framework.