Universal Jurisdiction

Universal jurisdiction is the principle that a state or an international body may claim criminal jurisdiction over a person accused of certain grave offenses regardless of where the offense was committed and regardless of the accused's nationality or place of residence. It is applied to crimes considered so serious that their prosecution is treated as a responsibility owed to the international community as a whole, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, extrajudicial killing and forced disappearance, offenses the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in turn defines as encompassing acts such as murder, rape, enslavement, persecution and extermination when carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. Its legal foundation rests on two related concepts: erga omnes, obligations a state owes to the international community as a whole, and jus cogens, peremptory norms of international law binding on every state regardless of consent. The principle traces its modern practice to the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War, which established that a state could try crimes that violate universal standards of right and wrong even without a direct territorial or national connection to the offense.