Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law

Is the neglect of economic, social and cultural abuses in international criminal law a problem of positive international law or the result of choices made by lawyers involved in mechanisms such as criminal prosecutions or truth commissions? Evelyne Schmid explores this question via an assessment of the relationship between violations of economic, social and cultural rights and international crimes. Based on a thorough examination of the elements of international crimes, she demonstrates how a situation can simultaneously be described as a violation of economic, social and cultural rights and as an international crime. Against the background of the emerging debates on selectivity in international criminal law and the role of socio-economic and cultural abuses in transitional justice, she argues that international crimes overlapping with violations of economic, social and cultural rights deserve to be taken seriously, for much the same reasons as other international crimes.

1. Introduction; 2. Rethinking hierarchies of human rights in international criminal law; 3. Relating international crimes to ESCR violations; 4. Crimes against humanity revisited: from Nuremberg to Zimbabwe; 5. Four groups of war crimes and the forgotten trial of Gauleiter Greiser; 6. Genocide and the battles Raphael Lemkin did not lose; 7. Torture, slavery and other crimes overlapping with ESCR violations; 8. Corollaries of qualifying ESCR violations as international crimes; 9. Conclusions.

Evelyne Schmid is an associate professor of international law at Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. She was previously based at the Universität Basel, Bangor University and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID). She also acted as the project coordinator for the International Criminal Court's Legal Tools Project at TRIAL in Geneva.