War crimes are serious violations of the laws and customs of war and armed conflict. They can be committed by combatants as well as civilians and can involve State responsibility or individual criminal liability. These include murder, rape, torture, indiscriminate attack, pillaging, destruction of property not justified by military necessity and other offenses.
While most countries have had criminal laws against things like murder and robbery for thousands of years, it is only in the last century that the term “war crime” has gained recognition and acceptance. This is largely due to the horrors of World War II, which caused victorious nations to prosecute people they believed had committed war crimes. These trials, called the Nuremberg Trials, set a precedent for tribunals established by later international conventions and ad hoc treaty tribunals such as those set up to try the perpetrators of war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The definition of war crimes in these tribunals and international conventions is more expansive than the definition used at the Nuremberg Trials. The ad hoc tribunals, for instance, have included in the list of war crimes such acts as imposing an illegal curfew or prohibiting the movement of persons within the territory of the invaded country and preventing access to food, shelter, medical treatment and other necessities; cruel or inhuman treatment; mass rape and sexual assault; causing or allowing prisoners to be exposed to danger; and theft of property through fraudulent contracts.