CYIL 2015

MANIFEST VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER a manifest violation of the UN Charter. Therefore, it should be suggested that it would amount to a crime of aggression. Third, with regard to the Russian involvement in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, its character, gravity and scale would have to be analysed in order to conclude whether such intervention amounts to a manifest violation of the UN Charter. 7. Conclusions The Kampala conference provided us with a new definition of a crime of aggression that poses many legal questions, one of them being the requirement of an act of aggression to constitute by its character, gravity and scale a ‘manifest violation’ of the UN Charter. As Marko Milanovic of the University of Nottingham School of Law aptly commented, the vagueness of these terms is, well, manifest . 16 Because the majority of real-life cases of the use of force range within the grey area, the biggest challenge for the Court will be to develop some criteria for assessing cases that are legally controversial. One such example is humanitarian intervention – the Court will have to assess whether the grounds for such an intervention were sufficient. The threshold for considering humanitarian intervention not illegal should be rather high, in order to avoid states misusing it for their particular purposes.Therefore, it should be suggested that humanitarian intervention should not be regarded illegal only if directly aimed at putting an end to unbearable suffering and life-danger of people . It is suggested that this would be fulfilled in the cases of crimes against humanity or genocide. Any use of force against another state under the auspices of ‘humanitarian intervention’ that does not meet such a threshold should be regarded as illegal and therefore be able to amount to a crime of aggression. With regard to the definition, several disadvantages of having such vague terms are to be mentioned, with the argument of juristocracy in the first place. In fact, a handful of experts without a democratic mandate from the people will by their interpretation create law. Another problem is that by extending the Court’s jurisdiction for such a politically sensitive issue the Court will be politicised, or rather it will be very difficult for the judges to decide purely legally without considerations of political consequences. Third, the foreseeability of law is negatively affected by the uncertain definition, which is a considerable problem in particular in criminal law. Nevertheless, one important advantage of having such a general definition also needs to be stressed. The real cases of the use of force in international law are very varied and they cannot be assessed in a robot-like way. Therefore, the fact that they need to be considered with all the relevant circumstances of each particular case by

16 See MILANOVIC, Marko. Aggression and Legality: Custom in Kampala. Journal of International Criminal Justice , vol. 10, 2012, p. 170.

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