XXIV Edición de la Competencia Internacional “Víctor Carlos García Moreno” – Procedimiento ante la Corte Penal Internacional

International criminal law emerged from the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, which for the first time held individuals — not just states — criminally responsible under international law for aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The field developed slowly during the Cold War but accelerated in the 1990s with the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, 1993) and Rwanda (ICTR, 1994), followed by hybrid courts in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and Lebanon. These bodies refined the elements of core international crimes and pioneered modes of liability such as joint criminal enterprise and command responsibility. The 1998 Rome Statute created the International Criminal Court (ICC), which began operating in 2002 as the first permanent court with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and — since the 2010 Kampala amendments — the crime of aggression. The ICC operates under the principle of complementarity, intervening only when states are unwilling or unable to prosecute. Cases reach the Court through state referrals, UN Security Council referrals, or the Prosecutor's proprio motu investigations authorized by a Pre-Trial Chamber. Today the Court faces significant challenges: arrest warrants against sitting leaders (including Vladimir Putin in 2023 and Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024) have tested cooperation duties under Article 86; major powers including the United States, China, Russia, and India remain non-parties; and African Union states have at times criticized perceived selectivity. Debates focus on head-of-state immunities under Article 27 versus Article 98, the scope of aggression jurisdiction, victim participation, and the Court's relationship with the Security Council under Articles 13(b) and 16.

International humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of armed conflict, regulates the conduct of hostilities and protects persons who are not or no longer participating in them. Its modern codification began with the 1864 Geneva Convention, inspired by Henry Dunant's witness of Solferino, and the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, which limited means and methods of warfare. The framework was overhauled after World War II with the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which protect wounded soldiers, shipwrecked sailors, prisoners of war, and civilians, and was supplemented by the 1977 Additional Protocols extending protections to non-international armed conflicts and codifying rules on distinction, proportionality, and precaution. IHL rests on a balance between military necessity and humanity, operationalized through customary rules — comprehensively studied by the ICRC in 2005 — and treaties on specific weapons (chemical, biological, anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions). Serious violations constitute war crimes under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, creating an enforcement bridge between IHL and international criminal law. The principle of distinction between combatants and civilians, the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks, and protections for medical personnel, humanitarian workers, and cultural property are widely recognized as customary. Contemporary armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, and the Sahel have placed IHL under acute strain. Debates focus on the qualification of conflicts (international vs. non-international), urban warfare and proportionality assessments, attacks on hospitals and humanitarian infrastructure, the legal status of private military contractors and organized armed groups, the application of IHL to cyber operations and autonomous weapons systems, and the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

International human rights law was born from the catastrophe of World War II and the conviction, expressed in the UN Charter, that respect for human dignity is a foundation of international peace. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights set the normative benchmark, later translated into binding obligations through the 1966 International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, together forming the International Bill of Human Rights. Specialized treaties followed on racial discrimination, women's rights, torture, children, migrant workers, disabilities, and enforced disappearance, each with its own monitoring body. Regional systems reinforce the universal framework: the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) and its Court, the American Convention on Human Rights (1969) with the Inter-American Commission and Court based in Washington and San José, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (1981) with its Commission and Court. The UN Human Rights Council, created in 2006, conducts the Universal Periodic Review and operates special procedures. Crucially, human rights law applies in peacetime and, increasingly, in armed conflict alongside IHL, and grave violations may constitute crimes against humanity triggering individual criminal responsibility before the ICC. Current debates address extraterritorial application of treaties, the relationship between human rights and counter-terrorism, business and human rights and the proposed binding treaty, climate change as a human rights issue (recognized by the Inter-American Court's 2024 advisory proceedings and the ICJ's 2025 opinion), digital rights and surveillance, the rights of migrants and refugees, and shrinking civic space. States increasingly contest the universality of certain rights, while accountability gaps persist between treaty norms and domestic enforcement.

Public international law is the body of rules governing relations among states and, increasingly, other subjects of international law including international organizations, individuals, and certain non-state actors. Its modern foundations are traced to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the writings of Grotius, but the discipline was reshaped by the 20th century through the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 1945 UN Charter, and the Statute of the International Court of Justice. Article 38 of the ICJ Statute identifies its sources: treaties, customary international law, general principles of law, and — as subsidiary means — judicial decisions and scholarly writings. The field rests on foundational principles codified in instruments such as the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the 2001 ILC Articles on State Responsibility, and the UN Charter's prohibitions on the use of force (Article 2(4)) and intervention. Sovereign equality, pacta sunt servanda, peaceful settlement of disputes, self-determination, and the prohibition of aggression coexist with peremptory norms (jus cogens) from which no derogation is permitted, including the prohibitions of genocide, slavery, torture, and aggression. Specialized regimes have proliferated: law of the sea (UNCLOS 1982), international environmental law, international economic law, diplomatic and consular law, and international criminal law. Contemporary debates concern the resilience of the rules-based order amid great-power competition, the use of force doctrines (self-defense against non-state actors, humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect), the legal effects of unilateral sanctions and countermeasures, the fragmentation versus unity of international law, state responsibility for cyber operations and climate harm, and the binding force of ICJ judgments — illustrated by recent proceedings on Ukraine, Gaza, climate change obligations, and the legal consequences of prolonged occupation.