Crimes against humanity: international legal and national aspects of the regulation of unlawful behavior

Abstract

The article is devoted to international legal and national aspects of the regulation of criminal liability for crimes against humanity, especially important in times of ongoing armed aggression against Ukraine, the course of which is accompanied by large-scale commission of war crimes (Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), the crime of aggression (Article 437 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), propaganda of war (Article 436 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), crimes against humanity (Article 442-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). Based on the analysis of the provisions of the Statutes of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a conclusion is made about the almost absolute reproduction of Article 442-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine through the understanding of the latter.
The importance of establishing a contextual element when qualifying crimes against humanity is emphasized, which is proposed to be associated with the following features: 1) confirmation of the fact of a large-scale or systematic attack; 2) the object of the attack must be any civilian population; 3) the attack was carried out in support of the policy of a certain state or organization; 4) the perpetrator’s awareness that his unlawful behavior was carried out in the context of a large-scale or systematic attack.