Atrocity and the pain in law

This chapter argues that modern law and its systems have become instrumental in the recognition of, and response to suffering endured as a result of injury deliberately inflicted or because of failures to act. It focuses on an area of modern international law that purports to address the most egregious forms of the deliberate infliction of suffering on human beings: what is often called ‘atrocity’ in the contemporary development of the laws of war and what has become known as international criminal law. The term ‘atrocity’ indicates a monstrous act of cruelty which is self-evidently wrong, self-evidently beyond what is generally acceptable even in the violence of wartime. Sexual violence in war has been identified by the International Criminal Court as a crime to be given specific attention; the legal provisions are ambiguous in how serious they reflect the determination