United Nations War Crimes Commission


The United Nations War Crimes Commission initially called the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes, was a commission of the United Nations that investigated allegations of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers in World War II.

History

The Commission was constituted at the behest of the British government and the other sixteen Allied nations at a meeting held at the British Foreign Office in London on 20th October, 1943, prior to the formal establishment of the United Nations in 1945.
The proposal of its establishment was made by the Lord Chancellor John Simon in the House of Lords on 7 October, 1942. A similar statement was issued by the United States government.
The Commission's objects and powers were conferred as follows:

  1. It should investigate and record the evidence of war crimes, identifying where possible the individuals responsible.
  2. It should report to the Governments concerned cases in which it appeared that adequate evidence might be expected to be forthcoming.

One of the Commission's tasks was to carefully collect evidence of war crimes for the arrest and fair trial of alleged Axis war criminals. However, the Commission had no power to prosecute criminals by itself. It merely reported back to the government members of the UN. These governments then could convene tribunals, such as the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The Commission was headed by Cecil Hurst and later in 1945 by Lord Wright. Having operated from 1943 to 1948, it was dissolved in 1949.
According to British academic Dan Plesch, Adolf Hitler was put on the UNWWCC's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945, a month before Hitler's death, "the commission had endorsed at least seven separate indictments against him for war crimes."
However limited its powers, the creation of the commission was a landmark in the history of human justice in the field of international law.

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