The War Crime of Committing Outrages upon Human Dignity and Degrading Treatment

The present paper seeks to discuss the war crime of committing outrages upon human dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. This crime is defined in Article 8(2)(b)(xxi) of the International Criminal Court Statute. Although the war crimes perpetrated in Camp 9 of Iraq are not limited to outrages upon human dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, this crime was selected to be studied here based on several criteria: first, it was inflicted upon all prisoners; second, it was practiced for the entire period of our imprisonment, i.e. four and a half years; third, it was explicit and obvious; and fourth, all prisoners were victimized by this crime. Humiliating and degrading treatment here refers to a lack of lavatories within the dormitories of the camp which brought about degrading and immoral consequences. Unfortunately, the officers of the Red Cross who frequently visited the camp took no measure to solve the problem.