During World War II, the Japanese Kwantung Army’s Unit 731 secretly conducted large-scale, inhumane, and unethical human experimentation in China, culminating in one of the most heinous medical atrocities, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Asia-Pacific theatre of the war. Despite the gravity of the subject matter and its historical significance, research on Unit 731 has, for a long time, been rather limited, but has gradually increased in recent decades. In this article, we identify several important characteristics and trends in research activities related to Unit 731, with a view to providing a general overview of the existing scholarship and to providing recommendations for future research.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, academic research started to accumulate. The second stage was one of rapid development from the 1980s to the 1990s. During this period, research efforts in Japan had a far-reaching influence and began to spread to China, Europe, and the U.S. Scholars from scientific, medical, and educational communities began participating in Unit 731 research successively. The third stage of multi-dimensional development began at the onset of the twenty-first century. Research expanded into comparative inquiries of Japanese medical atrocities and their Nazi counterpart; at the same time, research on many topics in diverse disciplines was also deepened and intensified. In addition to focusing on pragmatic issues such as reflections and actions of modern society and reconciliation, researchers have also been concerned with historical writing and collective memory.

The history of the notion of “war crimes” spans at least ten centuries. As far as the Western hemisphere is concerned, it starts some time in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, absorbs normative content during the following centuries, appears as a phrase in the eighteenth century, takes juridical shape and becomes an accepted notion in the nineteenth century, and starts being enforced as a category of criminalized violations of the laws of war with greater regularity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, war crimes constitute one of the “core” categories of recognized international crimes. During that long process of normative development, a core set of rules and prohibitions crystallized to form a body of law first referred to as the laws and customs of war and later as international humanitarian law (IHL) when those laws and customs came to be accepted as truly international. Various means of enforcement – reprisals, hostage-taking, reparations – would be tried over time to give this body of law and its prohibitions a degree of coercive power and deterrence. Slowly, the idea that individual criminal responsibility should attach to the violation of some of the most important prohibitions of IHL came to be accepted as an alternative to what had proven to be ineffective means of enforcement. The notion of “war crimes” grew out of this process, and the list of conduct coming under that umbrella expanded significantly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries under the combined pressures of violent historical events and the prosecutorial and codificatory efforts that resulted from those events. The twentieth century witnessed the general acceptance of the notion of war crimes, their recognition as norms of customary international law, their frequent domestic and international enforcement, the refinement of their legal contours, their expansion into new territories including non-international armed conflicts, and the creation of institutions, jurisdictional principles and mechanisms geared towards the effective enforcement of those offences and prohibitions.

Existing accounts of normative change in international politics place undue focus on powerful actors as norm entrepreneurs and the organizational platforms that facilitate their advocacy. This can obscure the ideational innovation that precedes advocacy, biasing analysis towards structural incentives, rather than agency. To rebalance such accounts, we offer an agentive model of ideational innovation that treats norm entrepreneurship as a process, rather than locating it in a single actor. By bridging IR and history of political thought, our model helps trace the origins of normative ideas, development, and influence forensically. We illustrate its benefits with multi-archival research (conducted in the US, UK, and Czechia) into Bohuslav Ečer, Czechoslovakia’s representative at the 1943–1948 UN War Crimes Commission. Employing process tracing methods on new evidence, we show how Ečer synthesized multiple influences into an innovative proposal for holding individuals criminally responsible for aggression. Using original archival documents, we show how his ideas swayed key US policymakers via unlikely channels and helped shape a pivotal international norm codified in the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. Appreciation of Ečer’s agency alongside other key innovators contributes to our understanding of a pivotal norm, helps remedy biases in knowledge production, and enriches our theoretical understanding of normative change.

In this paper, we detail and critique dominant narratives of war crime apologia. These narratives portray the circumstances of a war crime, the perpetrator’s character and motives, and the broader context in which the crime occurred, in ways that minimise or negate the perpetrator’s moral, and sometimes legal, blameworthiness. In section one, we identify and critique three broad categories: (1) individualising narratives (‘uncommon practice’), (2) excusatory narratives (‘essence of war’), and (3) justificatory narratives (‘tragic necessity’). Drawing on a range of real world examples, we outline the features of these narratives and the underlying theory of moral responsibility and blameworthiness on which they implicitly depend. In section two, we elucidate the role of these narratives in the promotion and perpetuation of socially, politically, and legally harmful attitudes towards war crimes. By advancing self-serving perpetrator-centric views about responsibility and blame, these narratives cultivate a cultural and legal toleration and, in some cases, celebration, of atrocity. They also perpetuate a distorted image of war itself, as a space that cannot accommodate moral and legal restraints. This image of war, we argue, weakens the post-Geneva consensus about the reach and limits of battlefield violence and makes the future commission of war crimes more likely. In conclusion, we consider how these narratives could be challenged within military institutions, and in the political and social realm.

The purpose of this study is to discuss possible solutions to stated problems and to reflect on the prospects for the resumption of military justice in Ukraine. The research formulates solutions for overcoming the negative consequences for the judiciary of the armed aggression by Russia against Ukraine. With regard to the limited institutional and human resources of international tribunals such as the International Criminal Court, the main burden of the investigation and trial of cases arising from military legal relations will be placed on the Ukrainian judicial system. International tribunals play a more global role, which is imposing responsibility on the organisers of armed aggression against Ukraine and placing sanctions on the military and political leaders of the aggressor country. For the judiciary of Ukraine, the best way to resolve this significant problem is to restore the system of military courts, which were voluntarily liquidated in 2010. The restoration of military courts will make it possible to unload pressure from the system of courts of general jurisdiction, to ensure prompt resolution of hundreds of thousands of cases of compensation for damage caused to citizens and businesses as a result of the hostilities, as well as the just trial of criminal proceedings for military and war crimes.

The cessation of the Russian Federation’s membership in the Council of Europe (CoE) under Article 58 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Article 8 of the Statute of the CoE is an important decision in the wake of Russian aggression against Ukraine involving serious human rights violations. Consequently, Russia’s disengagement from CoE mechanisms means Russians and other victims of human rights abuses seeking justice are no longer protected by the ECHR, as of September 16, 2022, thus affecting the human rights protection framework in Europe amidst the war. This implies that Russia no longer has a judge in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) under Article 20 of the ECHR. Its citizens will no longer be able to appeal against their government to the ECtHR under the individual ECHR applications mechanism, raising serious concerns about Russians’ lack of access to the ECtHR and the non-implementation of ECtHR judgments, which tests the reach and resilience of Europe’s human rights framework in protecting peace and security in the region.

In this context, the authors argue that since the ECtHR no longer exercises its jurisdiction in Russia, it is necessary to analyze the Rome Statute’s role in this regard. A possible solution can be found in European Union (EU) nations undertaking national investigations through mutual partnerships against the individuals who have committed atrocities of international concern, such as crimes against humanity or war crimes, based on the principle of international jurisdiction, to reestablish international peace and security.

The study aimed to identify, develop and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative methods, technologies and approaches for the identification of deceased persons during armed conflicts, natural disasters and other emergencies, to improve the accuracy, efficiency and ethics of the identification process. For this purpose, innovative criminalistic and forensic medical methods of deceased identification were analysed, i.e. the specifics of each method and its practical application. As a result, the study determined that the accuracy and speed of identification of the deceased are significantly improved by innovative identification methods such as DNA analysis, forensic anthropology, medical record comparison, big data and artificial intelligence. Their use is especially appropriate in situations where the condition of the bodies makes conventional methods, such as fingerprinting or visual recognition, ineffective. The main obstacles to the identification process are mass graves, the destruction of bodies and the lack of centralized databases of the deceased. Modern laboratory technologies, such as mass spectrometry and three-dimensional reconstruction, are needed to address issues related to the condition of the remains, such as decomposition, fragmentation or thermal damage. However, the lack of adequate logistical support is still a serious problem. Innovative approaches require adherence to legal and ethical standards, such as protecting personal information, respecting cultural and religious customs, and providing families with access to information about the deceased. The coordination of specialists’ efforts and the guarantee of the accuracy of the results largely depend on international standards such as INTERPOL disaster victim identification. An important step in improving efficiency is their integration into national identification systems. Joint protocols and international databases ensure effective coordination between states.

This article presents the results of archaeological research of the post-Second World War mass grave site of Jama pod Macesnovo gorico in Slovenia. The surroundings of the killing site and the mass grave have been the subject of various investigations, including the exhumation of human remains in 2022. In addition to the human remains of approximately 3450 individuals, the results of metal detector surveys, and the excavation of the grave itself have yielded thousands of artefacts associated with the victims and perpetrators, shedding light on the events of the post-Second World War period and mass murder of opponents of the communist-oriented national liberation movement and new Yugoslavian regime. The study represents the results of the most extensive exhumation of war victims’ remains in Slovenia and demonstrates the significant role of archaeology in the reconstruction of historically poorly documented events in modern conflicts.