Text of the Nürnberg Principles Adopted by the International Law Commission (ILC)

▢ In 1945, at the termination of the Second World War, the victorious powers - namely the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union - agreed to establish a tribunal - the International Military Tribunal - in Nuremberg with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. This tribunal became known as the Nuremberg Tribunal.

As a pathfinder forum for the trial of the most serious crimes known to humanity, the Nuremberg Tribunal established the ground for the institution in subsequent decades of ad hoc and permanent tribunals with international jurisdiction, one of the most recent of which was the International Criminal Court of The Hague in 2002.

▢ In December 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly, which Convention entered into force in January 1951. As of February 2025, it has 153 signatories, amongst whom you will find the United Kingdom. The Genocide Convention obliges States Parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition - a peremptory norm (aka jus cogens) under international law that is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is permitted.

The Genocide Convention imposes a minimum legal obligation on States each to take reasonable action to contribute toward preventing genocide, a duty that extends extra-territorially and applies regardless of whether any one State's actions alone are sufficient to prevent genocide (although such obligation can be held proportionate to the capacity to use influence in this regard). The ICJ considered in the case of Bosnia v Serbia (2007) that:

"if the State has available to it means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent, it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit."

Such means include rupture of any military assistance, including the supply of arms that would enable or facilitate genocide and other crimes under International law.

The ICJ had ruled, in the Bosnia case, that: "A State's obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed."

▢ In January 2024, the International Court of Justice decided that Israel was plausibly engaging in genocide in the Gaza Strip. On 16 September 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had, in the occupied Palestinian territories, "committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention".

Keir Starmer, however, has declared that he takes issue with the deliberations of the ICJ and global experts in the case of Palestine: "I am well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I have never described [the atrocities happening in Gaza] as ... genocide." [Prime Minister's Questions, House of Commons, 6 November 2024]

Similarly, former UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared, in a letter of 1 September 2025 to Sarah Champion, chair of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee: "As per the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,' ... the [British] government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent."

On other occasions, ministers have asserted, incorrectly, that, since the ICJ has not yet delivered a judgment, restraining measures would be premature. The Genocide Convention has been adopted by the International Criminal Court, where, unlike the International Court of Justice, criminal prosecutions may nominate individual alleged perpetrators - a point to which we should return. The UK's International Criminal Court Act, passed in 2001, recognises in English law the ICC.

▢ The ILC of the United Nations endorsed, in 1950 (document reference A/CN.4/L.2), a formulation of the principles of international law which were recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in its judgments. These principles were articulated as follows:

 ▷ PRINCIPLE I  Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE II  The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE III  The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE IV  The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE V  Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE VI  The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

  a. Crimes against peace:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

  b. War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas; killing of hostages; plunder of public or private property; wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

  c. Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.

 ▷ PRINCIPLE VII  Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

The Nuremberg Principles were developed and have been co-opted into jurisdictional practice as customary international law. A defence to a charge under Principle IV - known as the 'Superior Orders' defence - is addressed under Article 33 of the Treaty of Rome that established the International Criminal Court. In full:

1. The fact that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed by a person pursuant to an order of a Government or of a superior, whether military or civilian, shall not relieve that person of criminal responsibility unless:

(a) The person was under a legal obligation to obey orders of the Government or the superior in question;
(b) The person did not know that the order was unlawful; and
(c) The order was not manifestly unlawful.