O ZAŠTITNOM OBJEKTU ZLOČINA PROTIV ČOVEČNOSTI: NOVO RUHO MEĐUNARODNOG PRAVA O LJUDSKIM PRAVIMA
ON PROTECTIVE OBJECT OF THE CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY: NEW APPEARANCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL LAW ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Summary/Abstract: The legal science has disregarded the issue of protective object of the crime against humanity for a long time. The humanity has been considered as an indisputable and unquestionable category. Since the crimes against humanity include number of different criminal acts, which are per se indisputable and well founded in domestic criminal laws, one may assume that humanity is some kind of a qualitative middle point and the lowest common denominator for protected values of criminal quantities that constitute the content of this type of international crimes. While exploring this possibility the Preamble of Rome Statute has been analyzed, which should serve, as every other non-legal part of the legal act, for interpretation of the used terminology. This scientific task has not succeeded probably because of the lack of consciousness about the role of protective objects in creating incriminations by the founders of the statute of the International Criminal Court. The science was more enthusiastic than international legislator and created more interpretations on humanity as protective object of the crime against humanity, one of them being emphasized in this paper, and that is the most dominant one, which considers humanity as a unique and independent value. If it is considered from the perspective of classical interpretation of protected values in criminal law, which considers them as one of the fundamental human rights and freedoms, it is impossible to avoid a conclusion that humanity does not belong to these categories. Humanity is a principle, similar to legality or legitimacy, and not some kind of special human right that is as such suitable to be protected by the criminal law.

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