It is not always easy to spot a war crime.
The displacement of civilians from their homes by an enemy army is not necessarily a war crime.
It can be argued that the displacement is being carried out for the protection of the civilians.
It only becomes a war crime if the expulsions can be proven to be part of campaign of ethnic cleansing or designed as a mass punishment of civilians.
Equally, is it a war crime for the air force of one country to bomb an enemy’s television station because of the propaganda in the broadcasts?
Under the Geneva Conventions, this is not a war crime. Just about all aspects of a state’s infrastructure - roads, bridges, power stations, factories - become legitimate targets if they might be put to military use.
Such attacks only become war crimes if the extent of collateral damage to civilians and civilian interests resulting from the attack would be excessive compared to the military advantage gained from the attack.
Genocide is defined by the tribunal as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
But the law on war crimes is continually evolving.
In February 2001, the tribunal in The Hague delivered a ruling that made mass systematic rape and sexual enslavement in a time of war a crime against humanity.
Mass rape, or rape used as a tool of war, was then elevated from being a violation of the customs of war to one of the most heinous war crimes of all - second only to genocide.
