Crime against humanity

Rape and sexual violence

The Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters did not contain any explicit provisions which recognized sexual and gender-based crimes as war crimes or crimes against humanity, but Control Council Law No. 10 recognized rape as a crime against humanity. The statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda both included rape as a crime against humanity. The ICC is the first international court which expressly includes various forms of sexual and gender-based crimes – including rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, and other forms of sexual violence – as both an underlying act of crimes against humanity and a war crime which is committed during international and/or non-international armed conflicts.