Rule 102. Individual Criminal Responsibility
Rule 102. No one may be convicted of an offence except on the basis of individual criminal responsibility.State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
The Hague Regulations specify that no penalty can be inflicted on persons for acts for which they are not responsible.
[1] The Fourth Geneva Convention provides that “no protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed”.
[2] The requirement of individual criminal responsibility is recognized as a fundamental rule of criminal procedure in Additional Protocols I and II.
[3]The requirement of individual criminal responsibility is explicitly provided for in several military manuals.
[4] It is a basic rule of most, if not all, national legal systems.
[5]The requirement of individual criminal responsibility is included in the American Convention on Human Rights (as a non-derogable right), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.
[6] The European Convention on Human Rights does not spell out this rule, but the European Court of Human Rights has stated that “it is a fundamental rule of criminal law that criminal liability does not survive the person who has committed the criminal act”.
[7]It is a basic principle of criminal law that individual criminal responsibility for a crime includes attempting to commit such crime, as well as assisting in, facilitating, aiding or abetting, the commission of a crime. It also includes planning or instigating the commission of a crime. This is confirmed, for example, in the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
[8] Article 28 of the Statute also confirms the principle of command responsibility for crimes under international law.
[9] The principles of individual responsibility and command responsibility for war crimes are dealt with in Chapter 43.