INTRODUCTION

Violence is a human universal. It is of all times. This relativist truism should not cloud our awareness of the fact that during the past century interpersonal violence has acquired a new dimension. The 20th century has demonstrated mass violence on a scale and with an intensity hitherto unknown to mankind (e.g. Glover 2001; Mazower 2002). To name but a few sobering examples: there were the two World Wars, the horrors of the Stalinist era and the cultural revolution in China, the killing fields in Cambodia, the atrocities in the Balkans, and quite a few so-called regional conflicts on the African continent (see e.g. Power 2003; Mann 2005; Prunier 2009). The atrocities involved hundreds of millions of casualties. Like never before, the lethal combination of human flaws and modern technology and weaponry created an opportunity to inflict suffering beyond comprehension.

There has been another shift worth noticing. During previous centuries, mass violence was closely connected to warfare, while the latter was primarily an aff air between the armies of sovereign nations. Hence the individuals who used to pay the ultimate price for these conflicts were predominantly professional soldiers. In the course of the 20th century this has gradually changed. In the First World War, a significant majority of casualties still came from military ranks. The Second World War reduced this proportion to some 50%, with the other half taken from the civilian population. During the Vietnam War, some 70% of ordinary civilians accounted for the total loss of life. In subsequent armed conflicts, this percentage further increased (Valentino 2005). In a macabre sense there is evidence of an unmistakable ‘civilization of warfare’ (see e.g. Chesterman 2001).

These developments necessitated the definition of new concepts of crime. Mass violence, oft en committed in the name of the State, called for its own labels to capture the essence of this new level of injustice (see Lemkin 1947; Bassiouni 1992; Power 2003). The abuse of sovereign power inherent in these atrocities led to the development of the so-called international crimes: crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of genocide.