Whilst the value of human integrity within the laws of individual states and the documents of international human rights is being increasingly consolidated and will become, sooner or later, the primary concern of the law, severe breaches of this value are indeed still widespread. In particular the sexual exploitation of children constitutes one of the most serious questions of national, regional, transnational and international law. According to international records, every fifteen seconds a child is raped in Africa alone. Almost half of the cases heard by the ICTY concern the sexual exploitation of women and children during armed conflict. More or less similar conclusions may be reached regarding the ICTR or the SCSL. In Rwanda alone, 500,000 females were raped. Almost 200,000 females and children have been the victims of cruel forms of sexual violence during the conflicts in Congo. Sexual abuse of children by priests cannot any longer be concealed in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, Ireland, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States, although it is ignored in most Islamic countries. The sexual exploitation of children is also widely practised in many other countries. Regrettably, 79% of all world trafficking is for sexual exploitation. The principal subject matter of this book is the legal etymology of sexual exploitation governing minors. The aim is to identify and analyse jus cogens and obligation erga omnes in relation to the sexual exploitation of children and to evaluate the international responsibility of states in relation to the elimination or prevention of the crime, and the prosecution and punishment of offenders.

Introduction written by Professor Benjamin B Ferencz This challenging volume examines the jurisprudence of international criminal justice from various points of view. The philosophy of justice may vary from time to time and from nation to nation, depending on prevailing attitudes towards the substantive rules which deal, in one way or another, with cultural norms. In the national and international area, the principles of criminal justice have a key role in examining the scope of the most serious violations of international criminal law. It is on the basis of appropriate judgment that these principles may be accumulated and achieved for the future conduct of man. This volume, therefore, examines the principles and dimensions of the constitutions of various international criminal tribunals/courts, with particular focus on the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As such, the volume offers a comprehensive evaluation of the rule of law and criminal justice and their legal tasks within the complementarity system of international criminal jurisprudence. The volume emphasises the prosecution and punishment of all those who may successfully escape from the proceedings of national and international criminal courts because of their juridical, political, religious, economic or military power. It demands the implementation of international law of jus cogens. The provisions of the Statute should not be deduced in contradiction to the norms from which no derogation is possible, such as prohibitions governing crimes against humanity, torture, apartheid, rape, war crimes, genocide and aggression. If the value of the task of the Court is to be realised by the majority of states in the international community, the cycle of impunity has to be abolished in the case of all states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations.

The Julian Assange case reminds us of the well-known Scandinavian narrative, Keiserens Nye klæder (The Emperor’s New Clothes). Once upon a time, two tailors weaved new clothes for an emperor. They claimed they used a magic fabric that apparently less talented people could not see. In reality, they wove nothing; they had no loom at all. However, they pretended with gestures of the hand that the loom was active. No one wanted to be the less gifted person, so everyone lied and confirmed the clothes were progressing. The emperor finally put on the magic clothes and marched naked around the capital city with the members of his entourage holding the magic train. Unexpectedly, a guiltless little child, shouted out with a confident voice “Men han har jo ikke noget paa” (“But he doesn’t have anything on!”). The emperor knew the child was right, but decided he must bear it until the procession was over. Human rights or international criminal justice is not simply hocus-pocus, but it seems to be so in the case of Assange, who has enlightened the world population about the hidden criminal political laundering of the big, powerful states. This book explores the propensity towards evil in the nature of collective entities based on political and economic gains against the international community as a whole. It underlines that immoral criminal political laundering is the basic reason for money laundries throughout the globe.

This book explores, from various perspectives, Kant’s codex of the categorical imperative and the supreme principle of morality in juxtaposition with the monopolisation of the rules of international criminal law. Kant’s reference to the term ‘propensity to evil in human nature’ is a much more serious iniquity universally in the nature of the Security Council than the concepts of a mens rea and actus reus in criminal law. His decisive warning foreshadows that the inclinations towards self-interest, self-love, and intent in collective mens rea within the resolutions of the Security Council prevent states from striving towards the supreme maxim of a genuine international moral worth. The idea of international criminal law is, thus, viewed as a ‘mirage’. Essentially, certain rules of the United Nations Charter, the system of international criminal justice, human rights law, and humanitarian law, like a fata morgana, are crucial if unattainable. The permanent members of the Security Council are deceiving the world by propagating a variety of excuses with the core objective of economic gain. This book will be of interest to anyone enthusiastic about positive law, the nature of criminal justice, classical moral philosophy, politics, and economics.

This pioneering scholarly oeuvre evaluates the major comparative philosophy of Islamic international criminal justice. It represents an in-depth analysis of the necessities of creating an Islamic international criminal court, its possible jurisdiction, proceedings, judgments, and sanctions. It implies a court functioning under the legal personality of the International Criminal Court, with comparative international criminal lawyers with basic knowledge of Shariah contributing to the prevention of crimes and impunity at an international level. The morality and philosophy of Islamic justice are highly relevant with reference to the atrocities committed explicitly or implicitly under the pretext of Islamic rules by superiors, groups and governments. The volume focuses on substantive criminal law and three methods of the criminal procedure, namely the inquisitorial, adversarial, and adquisitorial. The first two constitute the corpus juris of civil and common law systems. The third term presents a hybrid of the first two methods. The intention is to enhance the scope of each method of the criminal procedure comprehensively. The volume examines their variations and effects on a shared system of international criminal justice. The inherence of comparable norms in the foundation of Islamic and international criminal law affirms their efficiency in the implementation of the essence of the complementarity principle. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in comparative criminal law, international criminal justice, and Shariah criminal law. It is recommended for course literature.

This book begins with the belief that, if a moral principle cannot be identified in the language of the law, if law is not underpinned by a moral understanding of the norm, if the moral accusation is not attached to the violations of certain indispensable norms of the law, then we are violating the peremptory character of the universality of the moral law. The book vicariously objects to any dispute for the advantage of the impunity of those who have cruelly contravened the corpus juris of international peremptory criminal law. What justifies the law in recognizing certain principles as peremptory derives from the highest genetic merit for the international human community as a whole. Here, the term ‘peremptory’, for classical morality, is seen to encompass love for the spirit of truth, for the strength of equality of arms and for the reaffirmation of the value of the essence of man where its infringements violate the indispensable universal rights of nature. This is regardless of whether its perpetrators are Western or non-Western.