Many acts are widely accepted as crimes against humanity by many different international authorities. Some of the most fundamental include:

Murder and Extermination

Murder and the extermination of a demographic group are universally acknowledged as crimes against humanity when directed by the state. These terms refer to a ruler or government killing members of its own population, usually on a mass scale. In many cases, victims are targeted for extermination based on ethnic discrimination, religious prejudice, or cultural reasons (‘genocide‘) or political opposition (‘politicide’).

Deportation and Forced Transfer

Deporting or forcibly transferring a segment of the civilian population against that population’s will is generally accepted as a crime against humanity. The use of mass deportations is usually only one aspect of a broader attack against a particular group, often performed in conjunction with other crimes against humanity like persecution, apartheid, and extermination.

False Imprisonment, Torture, and Disappearance

In many cases, a state that perpetrates crimes against humanity resorts to tactics such as false imprisonment, deprivation and torture, and forced disappearances. False imprisonment constitutes holding individuals against their will based on fraudulent, trumped-up, or no charges. While imprisoned, they may be physically and mentally tortured, subjected to hard labor, or exiled to remote labor camps. These practices are illegal under international law and violate human rights protections.

Rape and Sexual Slavery

Sexual violations like rape, human trafficking, and sexual slavery have long been recognized as crimes against humanity. Such crimes are often carried out against civilians and can be directed against specific ethnic groups. In addition to being an egregious violation of human dignity, sexual violence can be a tool used to humiliate and demoralize segments of the population.

In addition to the above offenses, many others are commonly considered to be crimes against humanity, including apartheid, forced sterilization, persecutions based on ethnic, religious, or political grounds, and enslavement. In many cases, an oppressive regime commits many different overlapping humanitarian violations.

How Are Crimes Against Humanity Punished?

Although there have been agreements between countries for many centuries dealing with war crimes, before the end of World War II, there was no significant international cooperation to prosecute humanitarian violations during peacetime. As a result, many heads of state committed terrible atrocities against their own populations. These went unpunished; in many cases, they were often entirely unnoticed by outsiders.

In the modern era, many states, human rights activists, and legal experts are making a concerted effort to bring the individuals responsible for international human rights violations to justice. While some trials have resulted in successful prosecutions, such as those related to atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, bringing perpetrators to justice remains an ongoing challenge. Agreeing what are crimes against humanity and bolstering the authority of the International Criminal Court or a State with Universal Jurisdiction such as Costa Rica are two important parts of that objective.