The absence of a dedicated international treaty on crimes against humanity has left survivors without clear paths to justice.
This piece was originally published by PassBlue, a women-led nonprofit newsroom that covers the U.N. and global women’s rights
Afghanistan. Myanmar. Syria. The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Over the last 80 years, there has rarely been a situation of atrocity that has not been marked by the commission of crimes against humanity. These crimes, defined by their widespread or systematic nature, target civilians and devastate societies.
Yet, while the international community has created legal regimes to address war crimes and genocide, we lack a global legal architecture for the prevention, suppression and punishment of crimes against humanity, leaving millions across the globe at risk and justice elusive for survivors.
The start of negotiations for such a treaty is not just overdue; it is of historic importance.
Late last month, the United Nations General Assembly launched a four-year process to prepare for and negotiate a new global treaty to prevent and punish crimes against humanity by 2028. If it is crafted with ambition and resolve, it can be a game-changer for international accountability, strengthen the rules-based order and offer hope and justice to victims and survivors.
Filling a Patchwork
While the genesis of crimes against humanity is often traced to the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals (as a matter of positive law), their natural-law origins date back centuries earlier to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which nearly 13 million Africans were kidnapped from their homes, transported under appalling conditions and subjected to enslavement, dehumanization and abuse.
Over time, our understanding of these crimes has evolved through the horrific experiences of their victims, including enforced disappearances in Argentina, apartheid in southern Africa, sexual violence in Bosnia and torture in Syria. Their legal elements have not only been clarified but also through the charters and jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals. That includes through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and domestic proceedings, particularly under universal jurisdiction.
While this work has advanced criminal accountability, the global legal framework for crimes against humanity remains a patchwork with crippling gaps, including the lack of overarching state obligations to prevent and punish such crimes and no clear recourse to interstate dispute resolution before the ICC.
In contrast, the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions provide widely ratified frameworks that impose concrete obligations on states to prevent and punish genocide and war crimes, respectively, including, in the Genocide Convention, recourse to the ICC.
This disparity has real-world consequences.
Take, for example, Afghanistan, where the Taliban have imposed a regime of gender-based systematic oppression and domination, characterized by murder, executions, arbitrary detention and punishment, torture and sexual violence. Not a conflict, not a genocide, but clearly an atrocity, the Taliban’s widespread attack against half of its population falls into a legal abyss in international criminal accountability, outside the limited context of the ICC.
A Vital Moment Amid Global Chaos
The treaty has been a long time coming, and its negotiation, in 2028 and 2029, will take place against an increasingly fractured multilateral system, hampered by budget constraints, escalating crises worldwide and polarization.
In the first week of the preparatory committee, held last month at the U.N. and followed up in April 2027, we saw some of these dynamics playing out. Even the simplest procedural aspects of the process, such as electing a chair and establishing a bureau for the prep comm, as it’s called, have been highly contested by some countries, creating a divisive atmosphere and impeding the momentum of the substantive discussions that had been scheduled to take place.
While Russia and China have been participating in the debate on procedural questions and matters of substance, the United States, which has varied its position on substance and procedure as White House administrations have changed, has so far remained silent.
While this polarization will certainly influence the procedural aspects of the negotiations, we must not allow it to compromise the substance. Countries have the chance to build a framework that reflects existing law, largely the approach taken by the International Law Commission in preparing the draft articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, which will serve as the baseline for negotiations. Countries can also engage in progressive development of international law and respond to the current realities.
We should also remember that the treaty’s very potential is what motivates states to support it. For example, over the six years that the topic languished in the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth Committee (legal matters), it became clear that the potential enumeration of the slave trade helped to shift the African regional group at the U.N.’s support for negotiations.
Indeed, the treaty’s legitimacy, effectiveness and durability depend on whether it addresses the evolving nature of atrocity crimes; not just the harms experienced today but those we cannot predict. Accordingly, the treaty should not only close gaps in the legal framework, for example, by enumerating the slave trade, environmental crimes, starvation and forced marriage, but also incorporate emerging norms, including gender apartheid and reproductive violence.
The Imperative Role of Civil Society
Ambition alone is not enough. The negotiation process itself must draw on the expertise and experiences of a wide range of parties. Affected communities, survivors, experts and civil society organizations must be meaningfully included in the procedures. Their voices are essential to crafting a treaty that is both principled and practical—recognizing the realities of victims and the challenges of on-the-ground enforcement.
This is why the decision of the prep comm to allow all stakeholders, including non-ECOSOC accredited organizations, to participate in the process, is crucial. Ensuring that diverse parties can participate in the negotiations is essential not only to a strong text but also to the treaty’s legitimacy and usefulness.
The talks about the treaty are often focused on crimes rather than on humanity, removing us from the treaty’s core objective: to protect all of humankind. Recommitting ourselves to this purpose underscores the need for the international community to seize this moment with urgency, resolve and ambition.
