Which crimes are considered human rights crimes?

Human rights claims are covered in national constitutions and international treaties. The treaty prohibiting torture, for example, defines the crime of torture and lists examples of acts of torture. But as is the case with most multilateral treaties, it lacked an enumeration of punishments for each category of act that falls under torture. The most recent treaty, the ICC treaty, also known as the Rome Statute, established more clarity in terms of which crimes are human rights crimes. The Statute provides for four categories of crimes, listed below. Genocide: Any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

1. killing members of the group,
2. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,
3. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,
4. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,
5. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 War crimes: War crimes include grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, when they are committed as part of a plan or policy or on a large scale. These prohibited acts include:

1. murder,
2. mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,
3. taking of hostages,
4. intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population,
5. intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals,
6. pillaging,
7. rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy or any other form of sexual violence,
8. conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

 Crimes against humanity: Crimes against humanity include any of the following acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

1. murder,
2. extermination,
3. enslavement,
4. deportation or forcible transfer of population,
5. imprisonment,
6. torture,
7. rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity,
8. persecution against an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds,
9. enforced disappearance of persons,
10. the crime of apartheid,
11. other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily or mental injury.

 Aggression: A “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution of an act of using armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State. The act of aggression includes, among other things, invasion, military occupation, and annexation by the use of force, blockade of the ports or coasts, if it is considered being, by its character, gravity and scale, a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations. The perpetrator of the act of aggression is a person who is in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State.