Combining history, politics, and critical analysis, he revisits the killing fields of Cambodia, documents the three-month Hutu "machete genocide" of about 800,000 Tutsi villagers in Rwanda, and casts recent headlines from Kosovo in the light of these other conflicts."--BOOK JACKET.

Pillage means theft during war. Although the prohibition against pillage dates to the Roman Empire, pillaging is a modern war crime that can be enforced before international and domestic criminal courts. Following World War II, several businessmen were convicted for commercial pillage of natural resources. And although pillage has been prosecuted in recent years, commercial actors are seldom held accountable for their role in fueling conflict. Reviving corporate liability for pillaging natural resources is not simply about protecting property rights during conflict--it can also play a significant role in preventing atrocity. Since the end of the Cold War, the illegal exploitation of natural resources has become a prevalent means of financing conflict. In countries including Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, and Sierra Leone, the illicit trade in natural resources has not only created incentives for violence, but has also furnished warring parties with the finances necessary to sustain some of the most brutal hostilities in recent history. In Corporate War Crimes, available in its second edition, law professor James G. Stewart offers a roadmap of the law governing pillage as applied to the illegal exploitation of natural resources by corporations and their officers. The text traces the evolution of the prohibition against pillage from its earliest forms through the Nuremburg trials to today's national laws and international treaties. In doing so, Stewart provides a long-awaited blueprint for prosecuting corporate plunder during war. Corporate War Crimes seeks to guide investigative bodies, war crimes prosecutors, and judges engaged with the technicalities of pillage. It should also be useful for advocates, political institutions, and companies interested in curbing resource wars. The report is available for download in English and French.

Human Rights after Hitler reveals thousands of forgotten US and Allied war crimes prosecutions against Hitler and other Axis war criminals based on a popular movement for justice that stretched from Poland to the Pacific. These cases provide a great foundation for twenty-first-century human rights and accompany the achievements of the Nuremberg trials and postwar conventions. They include indictments of perpetrators of the Holocaust made while the death camps were still operating, which confounds the conventional wisdom that there was no official Allied response to the Holocaust at the time. This history also brings long overdue credit to the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which operated during and after World War II. From the 1940s until a recent lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the UNWCC’s files were kept out of public view in the UN archives under pressure from the US government. The book answers why the commission and its files were closed and reveals that the lost precedents set by these cases have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes today. They cover US and Allied prosecutions of torture, including “water treatment,” wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were “just following orders.” Plesch’s book will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of the Second World War as well as provide ground-breaking revelations for historians and human rights practitioners alike.

Of the ICTY.

These essays are organised into four sections, dealing with the history of war crime trials from Weimar Germany to just after World War II, the sometimes diverging Allied attempts to come to terms with the Nazi concentration camp system, the ability of postwar societies to confront war crimes of the past and the legacy of war crime trials.

The book explores recent developments in the international and national prosecution of persons accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. It considers the relationship between national and international law, science and practice, with emphasis on the emerging principle of universial jurisdiction and the effect of "the war on terror" on legal norms.

This book explores the nature and scope of the provision requiring States to ‘ensure respect’ for international humanitarian law (IHL) contained within Common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It examines the interpretation and application of this provision in a range of contexts, both thematic and country-specific. Accepting the clearly articulated notion of ‘respect’ for IHL, it builds on the existing literature studying the meaning of ‘ensure respect’ and outlines an understanding of the concept in situations such as enacting implementing legislation, diplomatic interactions, regulating private actors, targeting, detaining persons under IHL in non-international armed conflict, protecting civilians (including internally displaced populations) and prosecuting war crimes. It also considers topical issues such as counter-terrorism and foreign fighting. The book will be a valuable resource for practitioners, academics and researchers. It provides much needed practical reflection for States as to what ensuring respect entails, so that governments are able to address these obligations.