Direct Link to Full 33-Page 2022 Publication: Policy on the Crime of Gender Persecution (icc-cpi.int)

Persecution has been a long-standing matter of international concern and is firmly based in customary international law. Persecution as a crime against humanity crystallised as an international crime in the London and Tokyo Charters and in the judgements of the post-Second World War International Military Tribunals, with evidence of gender-based crimes appearing in their written records. Despite this longstanding record of evidence of gender-based crimes in atrocities, the crime against humanity of persecution on the grounds of gender, referred to in this Policy as “gender persecution,” was not expressly established in treaty law until the adoption of the Rome Statute—the first international criminal law statute to recognise gender persecution as such. Inclusion of gender persecution resulted from a successful effort to secure recognition of various forms of sexual and gender-based harms in the Statute.

Source: WUNRN – 01.03.2023