Border violence as a crime against humanity
Some legal scholars and activists have argued that common forms of border control instituted in the twenty-first century by Western countries such as European Union member states, Australia, and the United States meet the definition of crimes against humanity and should be prosecuted by domestic and international courts.[1][2][3][4]
Crimes
[edit]Possible crimes against humanity could be murder, imprisonment, deportation, persecution,[5] and enforced disappearance.[6]
Support and opposition
[edit]Proponents of the idea include Nuremberg trials prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, who described the Trump administration family separation policy as a crime against humanity.[7]
Ioannis Kalpouzos and Itamar Mann have published multiple papers on the subject.[8][9] Kalpouzos cautions that it is daring to imagine that International Criminal Law (ICL) can be "anything but a hegemonic governance practice of powerful actors who seek to defeat their weaker enemies in law as well as in fact".[5]
Legal efforts
[edit]A previous legal complaint to the International Criminal Court about Australian border policies decided some legal questions on behalf of the accusers, but found there was insufficient evidence of crimes against humanity being committed.[10] Although as of 2020, the ICC prosecutor was investigating crimes against humanity against migrants in Libya, she did not mention that she was investigating any European complicity in their actions.[5] In 2025, lawyers filed a request with the ICC identifying 122 politicians and officials from European Union countries as co-perpetrators of crimes against humanity committed in Libya, as part of the European Union's externalization policies. Among the individuals listed are Mark Rutte, Donald Tusk, Frederica Mogherini, and Fabrice Leggeri.[11] One of the lawyers involved, Omer Shatz, described it as "legally... a very solid case", comparing the relationship between the Libyan Coast Guard and the European Union to when local individuals participated in the Holocaust on orders from Berlin.[10]
As of 2021[update], the legal success of this approach has been limited.[7]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Guild, Elspeth (11 August 2023). "Use of Force and Border Violence Troubles in Europe". Monitoring Border Violence in the EU. pp. 16–32. doi:10.4324/9781003424710-2. ISBN 978-1-003-42471-0.
- ^ Quadt, Teresa (June 2025). Reimagining Crimes Against Humanity: Confronting Impunity for Crimes Against Migrants in Peacetime Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute (PhD thesis). University of Malta. Retrieved 2025-11-12.
- ^ Iliadou, Evgenia (2023). Border Harms and Everyday Violence: A Prison Island in Europe. Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–5. ISBN 978-1-5292-1277-8.
- ^ Fehr, Irina (25 September 2025). "State-perpetrated Crimes against Migrants? Addressing Accountability in Croatian Migration Control through Criminal Law". European Journal of Migration and Law. 27 (2–3): 279–311. doi:10.1163/15718166-12340206.
- ^ a b c Kalpouzos, Ioannis (April 2020). "International Criminal Law and the Violence against Migrants". German Law Journal. 21 (3): 571–597. doi:10.1017/glj.2020.24.
- ^ Azarova, Valentina; Brown, Amanda Danson; Mann, Itamar (2022). "The Enforced Disappearance of Migrants". Boston University International Law Journal. 40: 133.
- ^ a b Green, Linda (1 December 2021). "The Killing Fields of the American Southwest: Notes from the Arizona Borderlands, Part 3". Dialectical Anthropology. 45 (4): 447–460. doi:10.1007/s10624-021-09643-4. ISSN 1573-0786. PMC 8743240. PMID 35035028.
- ^ Kalpouzos, Ioannis; Mann, Itamar (June 2015). "Banal crimes against humanity: The case of asylum seekers in Greece". Melbourne Journal of International Law. 16 (1): 1–28.
- ^ Mann, Itamar (1 January 2021). "Border Violence as Crime". University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law. 42 (3): 675. ISSN 1086-7872.
- ^ a b Thomas-Davis, Maya; Shatz, Omer (2020). "EU & Libya: interview with Omer Shatz". Socialist Lawyer (85): 14–17. doi:10.13169/socialistlawyer.85.0014. ISSN 0954-3635. JSTOR 10.13169/socialistlawyer.85.0014.
- ^ español, RENATA BRITO Leer en (16 October 2025). "Lawyers ask ICC to investigate 122 European officials for crimes against humanity in Mediterranean". AP News. Retrieved 20 October 2025.