Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

When the Allied Powers arranged for the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi war criminals, and a little later for the Tokyo Trial of Japanese war criminals, they hoped that this would be a deterrent against any recurrence of such atrocities. In fact, in the few international conflicts involving wars between states, the atrocities committed were limited and usually punished by the state of the offenders. Unfortunately, however, internecine wars of genocidal or ethnicidal proportions had occurred inside States between factions fighting for the government of a state or for a separation from it. It happened, for instance, in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Chechnya, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Kurdistan, Liberia, Mozambique, Somalia, and East Timor. The international community was able to stop some of these massacres; however, others are still flaring up from time to time. In none of them was an attempt made to deal with the perpetrators of the atrocities by establishing an international tribunal. Only in former Yugoslavia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994, the Security Council ordered the creation of such Tribunals. It is too early to compare the accomplishments of these tribunals with those of Nuremberg and Tokyo, but it might be useful to explain some similarities and differences between the two pairs of these tribunals.

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