The Criminal Code of Ukraine will comply with the norms of the Rome Statute of ICC. The President signed the law

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed Law No. 11484, which brings the Criminal Code of Ukraine (CCU) into compliance with the norms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Currently, the provisions of CCU do not provide for criminal liability for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Its provisions were systematically inconsistent with modern international law. Therefore, this law will update them, and Ukrainian legislation will comply with the norms of the Rome Statute.

The law criminalizes crimes against humanity and introduces command responsibility, meaning that commanders will be held responsible for the war crimes of their subordinates, even if they did not personally commit them, but knew about them and ignored them.

The law also provides for an increase in the term of punishment for the crime of aggression to life imprisonment.

The first part of Article 442 of the Criminal Code (genocide) will be interpreted in accordance with the text of Article 6 of the Rome Statute of ICC. The new wording will provide that causing a mental disorder to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial or religious group of people falls under criminal responsibility.

• On August 24, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law on the ratification of the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute is an international treaty that became the basis for the creation of ICC and defined the list of crimes that the court has the right to investigate: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression.

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.