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[Draft] On Universal Jurisdiction
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  • On Universal Jurisdiction
    Category: Human Rights | Strength: Significant | Submitted by: Auralia

    Quote
    Recognizing the moral depravity of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,

    Believing that such crimes are so heinous that the international community bears a collective responsibility to bring those who are guilty of such crimes to justice,

    Convinced, however, that the best means to accomplish this goal is to grant individual World Assembly member states the right and obligation to prosecute such individuals rather than to grant criminal jurisdiction to an international court,

    The General Assembly,

    Defines "universal jurisdiction" as the right to claim criminal jurisdiction for a crime allegedly committed by an individual, regardless of where the crime was allegedly committed or the citizenship, nationality, or country of residence of that individual,
    Declares that all World Assembly member states have the right to claim universal jurisdiction with respect to the following crimes:
    the systematic murder, enslavement, torture, rape, forced sterilization or deportation of any group of individuals,
    the systematic destruction of any group of individuals sharing a common identifiable characteristic, such as race, ethnicity or religion,
    the mistreatment of civilian populations or prisoners of war during wartime,
    wanton killing or destruction of property during wartime that is not justified by military necessity,
    any other act that constitutes a "crime against humanity" or a "war crime" under extant and future World Assembly legislation, or for which such jurisdiction is implicitly or explicitly recognized under World Assembly legislation;
    Requires member states to prosecute individuals suspected of committing a crime listed in section 2 when:
    the individual is located in that member state,
    the individual has not already been given a fair trial for that crime by another state, and
    there is sufficient evidence to justify a reasonable but cautious person's belief that the individual is most likely guilty of that crime;
    Permits member states to transfer an individual subject to prosecution under section 3 to the jurisdiction of another member state if that member state believes it is not capable of safely and fairly prosecuting that individual,
    Prohibits member states from limiting the available time to prosecute an individual for the crimes listed in section 2;
    Forbids the World Assembly from itself exercising criminal jurisdiction of any kind, including but not limited to through an International Criminal Court or a substantially similar institution,
    Clarifies that nothing in this resolution precludes the World Assembly from passing further legislation on universal jurisdiction.

    Some may notice this draft is somewhat similar to Extradite or Prosecute, and the differences are expressed by the author in this post:

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    As far as I can tell, this draft only blocks the formation of an International Criminal Court or a similar institution. I also believe that while there is some overlap between your draft and ours, there is a key difference: our draft explicitly defines certain particularly heinous crimes and requires prosecution for these or similar crimes, while your draft requires prosecution for any crime under international law.

    Official debate thread here.
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