April 14, 2022
On Tuesday 13 April President Joe Biden described Russian action in Ukraine as genocide and said international lawyers would have to decide when looking at the evidence.
Genocide is the most serious war crime that any government can be accused of – in the same category as the Holocaust, the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Srebrenica massacre.
The Genocide Convention places an obligation on countries to act to halt or prevent the crime.
In March Ukraine submitted an application to the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes committed by Russia.
With the charge of genocide requiring a very large burden of proof, the Telegraph newspaper interviewed RL Consultant Mark Guthrie for his view. He commented:
“War crimes fall into three categories. At the top there is genocide, then crimes against humanity, then strictly speaking war crimes or grave breaches of the Geneva Convention. As far as war crimes are concerned, there is a very strong case against Russia at the moment. But the longer and more atrocious and brutal the conflict, the greater the case to answer in relation to genocide.”
Read full piece here: [Telegraph]
From 2001 until 2006 Mark worked for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia Herzegovina where he held a number of roles including Senior Human Rights Officer and Rule of Law Adviser. He gave expert technical advice at the time of the introduction of a new criminal procedure code.
In addition, Mark has led a team of trial monitors and provided expert analysis of the local prosecution of war crimes cases and recently written an analysis for OSCE on the domestic prosecution of war crimes in Bosnia Herzegovina.
Learn about RL Consulting here: [Red Lion Consulting (RLConsulting)]
