23
Understanding the International Criminal Court
III. Crimes within
the jurisdiction
of the ICC
25. Which crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC?
The mandate of the Court is to try individuals (rather than States),
and to hold such
persons accountable for the most serious crimes of concern to the international
community as a whole,
namely the crime of genocide, war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and the crime of aggression.
26. What is genocide?
According
to the Rome Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts
committed with the intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group:
▪
killing
members of the group;
▪
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
▪
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
▪
imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group;
▪
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
