United Nations War Crimes Commission

The United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) initially called the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes, was a commission of the United Nations that investigated allegations of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers in World War II.[1]

United Nations War Crimes Commission
History
FoundedOctober 20, 1943 (1943-10-20)
Disbanded1948 (1948)

History
Front cover of the History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission

The Commission was constituted at the behest of the British government[2] and the other sixteen Allied nations at a meeting held at the British Foreign Office in London on 20th October, 1943, prior to the formal establishment of the United Nations in 1945.[3]

The proposal of its establishment was made by the Lord Chancellor John Simon in the House of Lords on 7 October, 1942. A similar statement was issued by the United States government.[4]

The proposal is to set up with the least possible delay a United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.

The Commission will be composed of nationals of the United Nations, selected by their Governments. The Commission will investigate war crimes committed against nationals of the United Nations recording the testimony available, and the Commission will report from time to time to the Governments of those nations cases in which such crimes appear to have been committed, naming and identifying wherever possible the persons responsible. The Commission should direct its attention in particular to organized atrocities. Atrocities perpetrated by or on the orders of Germany in Occupied France should be included.

The investigation should cover war crimes of offenders irrespective of rank, and the aim will be to collect material, supported wherever possible by depositions or by other documents, to establish such crimes, especially where they are systematically perpetrated, and to name and identify those responsible for their perpetration.
— Lord Chancellor John Simon at the House of Lords on 7 October, 1942.

The Commission's objects and powers were conferred as follows:

  1. It should investigate and record the evidence of war crimes, identifying where possible the individuals responsible.
  2. It should report to the Governments concerned cases in which it appeared that adequate evidence might be expected to be forthcoming.

One of the Commission's tasks was to carefully collect evidence of war crimes for the arrest and fair trial of alleged Axis war criminals. However, the Commission had no power to prosecute criminals by itself. It merely reported back to the government members of the UN. These governments then could convene tribunals, such as the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The Commission was headed by Cecil Hurst and later in 1945 by Lord Wright.[5] Having operated from 1943 to 1948,[6] it was dissolved in 1949.

According to British academic Dan Plesch, Adolf Hitler was put on the UNWWCC's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945, a month before Hitler's death, "the commission had endorsed at least seven separate indictments against him for war crimes."[7]

However limited its powers, the creation of the commission was a landmark in the history of human justice in the field of international law.

Cecil Hurst, 1945

References

Citations
  1. Roger Chickering; Stig Förster; Bernd Greiner (2005). A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937-1945. Cambridge University Press. pp. 371–. ISBN 978-0-521-83432-2.
  2. Effie Pedaliu (2004). Britain and the 'Hand-over' of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945-48. (JStor.org preview) Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 39, No. 4, Special Issue: Collective Memory, pp. 503-529
  3. Robert F. Gorman (2001). Great Debates at the United Nations: An Encyclopedia of Fifty Key Issues 1945-2000. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 10–. ISBN 978-0-313-31386-8.
  4. Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Statement on the Plan to Try Nazi War Criminals.," October 7, 1942.
  5. New York University. Law Library (1953). A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University: With Selected Annotations. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. pp. 655–. ISBN 978-1-886363-91-5.
  6. https://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49313#.WPVgDY61sUE
  7. Daniel Plesch 2017, p. 158.

Sources
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