The Judicial Mechanism of individual Liability Arising from Violations of International Humanitarian Law: Case Study of Iraq

International texts and practice reflected the evolution of the status of the individual within the international community, making him eligible for international rights and obligations. This development could have been an appropriate and effective instrument for activating the principle of non-impunity if it had taken its natural course in judicial practice. However, interventions have put an end to the scope of the application of individual criminal responsibility for violations of international humanitarian law, which can be summarized in three directions, which have the combined or separate effect of restricting or preventing the international or internal jurisdiction presumed to be in force. The first one is related with condition for the exercise the International Criminal Court of its substantive jurisdiction. The second is the tendency of some States to enact legislation or amendments to their legislation to extend their personal jurisdiction to achieve the mentioned objective by either restricting or preventing the international or national jurisdiction of a State for crimes or violations committed in its national territory. The third trend is reflected in the balance between the goals of politics and the demands of justice and exert political and economic pressure in order to force some countries to modify their national legislative system so as not to exceed the traditional rules in the exercise of regional jurisdiction. The situation in Iraq as a model of the study, clearly restricting the real and legal capacity to resort to international or national jurisdiction to punish perpetrators of violations of international humanitarian law in Iraq and to compensate victims and their families