ICC Appeals Chamber: A War Crime Does Not Have to Violate IHL

From Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris:  One of the most basic assumptions of ICL is that an act cannot be a war crime unless it violates a rule of international humanitarian law (IHL).

No more. The Appeals Chamber (AC) at the ICC has just unanimously held in Ntaganda that a perpetrator can be convicted of a war crime even if his act does not violate IHL. That decision is not simply “unprecedented,” as the AC openly acknowledges. It is simply incorrect — as this post will demonstrate.