Overview

What amounts to a war crime today? This timely book by world-renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson KC investigates the evidence and how attacks on free societies can be deterred. We are, today, exposed to evidence of thousands of war crimes. Residential buildings bombed and burning in Ukraine, dead children being dug out of the rubble in Gaza, civilians beaten and starved by armies in Sudan, hospitals and refugee camps deliberately targeted and a mounting number of aid workers, journalists and innocent civilians murdered by soldiers. The evidence proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but we know there will be few, if any, prosecutions. Newspapers and television reports do not identify them as war crimes, and diplomats and politicians are reluctant to label them as such. In consequence, soldiers hardly ever hesitate to commit them and generals have no moral qualms about issuing the orders. This book explains, simply and without resort to legalistic analysis, what amounts to a war crime today. It will alert soldiers to the orders they should not obey and warn officers what will make them criminals. It will give journalists and diplomats the confidence to describe war crimes. NGOs will have the power to refute government or military denials. Students of politics, law and international affairs will better understand this increasingly important subject within their discipline. Most importantly, citizens will learn how to identify and stigmatise the illegal actions of military forces in their own and other countries and become better informed about the legality of exporting arms to forces that may use them to commit war crimes. This is an authoritative and powerful study of the issues at play in an increasingly complex and violent world riven by conflict, and in many ways follows on from Robertson's bestselling CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

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9781761621598

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Author Information

Geoffrey Robertson KC has had a distinguished career as a trial counsel and human rights advocate. He has been a UN war crimes judge, a counsel in many notable Old Bailey trials, has defended hundreds of men facing death sentences in the Caribbean, and has won landmark rulings on civil liberty from the highest courts in Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth. He is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers, a Master of the Middle Temple, and a visiting professor at the New College of Humanities in London. His book Crimes Against Humanity has been an inspiration for the global justice movement, his other books include Freedom, the Individual and the Law, The Tyrannicide Brief, The Statute of Liberty, Dreaming Too Loud and the acclaimed memoir The Justice Game. He has made many television and radio programmes, notably Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals, and has won a Freedom of Information award for his writing and broadcasting. In 2011 he received the New York State Bar Association's Award for 'Distinction in International Law and Affairs', and was Australian Humanitarian of the Year in 2014. In 2018 he was awarded an order of Australia (AO) for 'his distinguished service to the law and the legal profession as an international human rights lawyer and advocate for global civil liberties'.

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