Transnational Organised Crime and International Criminal Law de lege lata

Transnational organised crimes as core crimes under the Rome Statute

The metamorphosis of apartheid, the attack against UN personnel, and torture

As a matter of fact, some crimes that had formerly been considered as independent transnational offences, namely ‘apartheid’, an ‘attack against UN personnel’, and ‘torture’, have been reorganised during the process of negotiation—starting with the ILC works and ending with the Rome Statute—into elements of two of the core crimes/⁸ Apartheid now shapes one element of the actus reus of a crime against humanity according to Article 7(1)(j) of the Rome Statute (ICCSt), attacks against UN personnel were included in the possibility of committing a war crime under Article 8(2)(b)(iii) and (e)(iii) ICCSt, and torture constitutes either a variant of a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(f), or a war crime under Article 8(2)(a)(ii). Owing to the fact that these formerly independent kinds of deviance had been considered as genuine crimes ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

we have to assert that the Rome Conference simply did not acknowledge them as further core crimes having the same value as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or aggression.

• [1] Cf. the content of Donal E. J. MacNamara and Philip John Stead, New Dimensions in TransnationalCrime, New York, John Jay Press, 1982, p. 5; Nikos Passas (ed.), Transnational Crime, Aldershot, Ashgate,1999, pp. 7-8, 13; Philip Reichel (ed.), Handbook of Transnational Crime & Justice, London, Sage, 2014,pp. v-vii.
• [2] Passas, ibid, p. 13.
• [3] N. Boister, ‘Transnational criminal law?’, (2003) 14 EJIL (5) 953, 954; Passas, ibid, pp. 13-14.
• [4] Patrick Robinson, ‘The missing crimes’, in Cassese et al., The Rome Statute, vol. 1, cited in note 3above, p. 498.