Crimes against humanity in the new Criminal Code of Republic of Lithuania

This article deals with the implementation of International Conventional and Customary Law norms on genocide and crimes against humanity into sources of the Criminal Law of Lithuania. Lithuania adopted a special law on Genocide of the Lithuanian Population in 1992. Mentioned Law proclaimed that Lithuania is accessing UN Convention on Genocide and established a Crime of Genocide in Lithuanian Criminal Law. However, Crimes against humanity as a general category has not been introduced into system of criminal law up to the adoption of the New Criminal Code in 2000 (though the Code is not in force yet). The current concept of Genocide in Lithuanian criminal law according to the Article 99 of new Criminal Code is broader than in International Law. First of all, it includes political as well as social groups in the protected groups list; secondly, it includes two additional inhumane acts: deportations and torture. Such extensions may be justified by the needs of Lithuania according to the cases of genocide of Lithuanian population and it corresponds to the modern tendencies in national criminal law systems (e.g. protection of political and social groups is included in the definitions of genocide in French, Polish, Latvian criminal codes).However, it may cause and actually caused some problems with regard to international assistance in criminal matters with state that adopted a conventional concept of genocide (e.g. Russia). Crimes against humanity in the new Criminal Code are named as „Course of conduct with the people prohibited by International Law“ (Article 100 of the new Criminal Code). It was drafted according to the International Criminal Court Rome Statute's Article 7, however some essential inadequacies shall be noted: firstly, the relations between general elements and features are not kept (e.g. Lithuanian version requires that act of person but not a attack shall be of systematic or wide spread nature); secondly, some inhumane acts are transferred without necessary clarifications (e.g. forced pregnancy). The author comes with the motivated proposals and proposes corresponding new definitions in order to eliminate enumerated shortcomings and inadequacies