The Persecution of Children as a Crime Against Humanity: The Case for the Prosecution

This book addresses age-based persecution of children as a crime against humanity in connection with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes (persecution - with some variation in the elements of the crime - is an existing offence under the Rome Statute of the permanent International Criminal Court, the statutes of various international criminal tribunals i.e. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and under the statutes of other international criminal courts (i.e. the  Special Court of Sierra Leone)). The book introduces a completely original concept in international criminal law, however, in discussing age-based persecution of children as an international crime against humanity where (i) the particular discrete child collective is targeted ‘as such’ for international atrocity crimes or (ii) individual children are targeted based on their age-based group identity as it intersects with other perpetrator – targeted characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, religion etc.