Canada
Practice Related to Rule 94. Slavery and Slave Trade
According to Canada’s LOAC Manual (1999), enslavement is a crime against humanity.
Canada’s LOAC Manual (2001), in its chapter on “War crimes, individual criminal liability and command responsibility”, refers to “enslavement” as a crime against humanity.
Canada’s Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act (2000) provides that the crimes against humanity and war crimes defined in Articles 7 and 8(2) of the 1998 ICC Statute are “crimes according to customary international law” and, as such, indictable offences under the Act.
In the
Rudolph and Minister of Employment and Immigration case in 1992, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal upheld an order for the removal from Canada of the accused, a German national who during the Second World War had requested and supervised the deportation and use of foreign civilians as slave labourers in the production of V2 rockets, on the ground that he had committed outside Canada an act that constituted a war crime.
In 2013, in the
Sapkota case, Canada’s Federal Court dismissed a request for review of a decision denying refugee protection to the applicant on grounds of complicity in crimes against humanity in Nepal between 1991 and 2009. While reviewing the submissions of the respondent, Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the Court stated: “The Respondent notes that the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court … is endorsed in Canada as a source of customary law.”