Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of war crimes (0th nomination)

Inherently POV and a magnet for controversy and edit war. I'm already in the process of deleting some of the more controversial parts of it. RickK 19:20, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)


 * I hate to say it because I agree with the above, but keep. This topic will be controversial. OTOH, I feel that the concept of the article has potential. - Kenwarren 21:36, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, but limit only to war crimes that have been accepted by an international court or tribunal. - SimonP 23:39, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * Abstain: A list of the crimes by statute, rather than "things people did that are war crimes" would help. Listing everything anyone has called a warcrime is inherently controversial and POV.  I think the article should stick to a list of things that international courts have defined as war crimes.  (E.g. "Felonies in the US include the following," rather than "It was a felony when Oliver North lied to Congress.") Geogre 00:22, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I was going to vote "Keep" with this reasoning: The controversy will already be in the articles about war crimes, making them more visible by use of a category is only honest. Otherwise, do you rely on the potential contrahents not finding the pages? But this is bogus, as I realized just soon enough: The articles inherently give more context in facts and more nuances on judgement. Reducing this to a simply including or not including in a category doesn't help at all. It's like one of these kafkaesque interrogation scenes, where only the answers "yes" and "no" are allowed. I vote Delete. -- Pjacobi 00:29, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete - more trouble than it's worth. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:14, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, however the article needs to be put into two sections, those who have been accused of crimes and found guilty in court, and those who have been accused of war crimes and stating who has done the accusing. It could be a long list... Dunc_Harris|&#9786; 09:58, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep - at present the scale and NPOV of war crime and crime against humanity articles is dubious: the former because only the very few universally agreed cases taken to court (political decision) are really identified by name, the latter because war crimes are predominantly identified as such by the winning side and many crimes against humanity tend to get sidelined or underreported. An article that lists in summary form incidents which are or have been felt at times to be WC/CAH, and the basis for these feelings, addresses this. That some incidents are felt to be WC/CAH by certain groups and not by others is inherently POV, but the fact that at least some people feel it is a WC/CAH and the basis for their feeling, is not . This is currently neither available, complete nor neutral elsewhere. So long as each entry is NPOV, it'll do its job. (Example: "Excessive force against a civilian population, or military necessity to minimise loss of life?" is a NPOV summary of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 14 words). Whilst difficult to accept that some people may feel this way, it shouldn't be an edit war, as it can easily and neutrally be verified whether an incident occurred and the basis upon which some populations classify it as an alleged WC/CAH. Let it stand. Perhaps rename to "List of alleged war crimes". There needs to be a list of this kind, however hard the feelings it raises. See Talk:List of War Crimes. FT2 13:09, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, but change title. As it seems the article will focus on incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed. Any such incident will certainly be regarded as a crime by at least some people. (Consider the alternative: Incident X resulted in 100,000 civilian deaths, but not many people were upset by this since it followed international law.) The page will be useful to people who want to get an overview of the scale of different disasters. The warcrime-or-not question should be discussed in the article on each incident. PeR 13:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Inescapable POV. All wars are crimes, except for the ones involving only mercenaries (in which case it's a violent game). Wile E. Heresiarch 15:42, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep ONLY if the list is limited to cases that have either already been tried in an international court (eg Nurenburg, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or future cases listed by the International Criminal Court, and the article is explicitly described as such. Any bias inherent is therefore their problem. Average Earthman 19:42, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. incapable of NPOV.  Bacchiad 21:56, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Why not change it into List of war crimes prosecutions? That would remove any POV problems.  Postdlf 01:24, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * (Because the decision to prosecute is not neutral. Only a tiny handful of incidents are formally prosecuted. Chechnia, Cambodia, these have not been prosecuted. Perhaps as Per says, change title (Allegations of Crime against Humanity). Restricting the article to prosecuted cases greatly under-represents this crime. It's also inherently NPOV since most cases realistically need Western interest and support to be prosecuted. Crimes against humanity in less strategic parts of the world, or alleged to be committed by the West (USA/Europe) have historically been far less likely in comparison to obtain the political support necessary for a case to be suggested. Somehow this problem needs to be rectified for NPOV, any suggestions how? FT2 05:17, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC))


 * Whether or not something has been prosecuted (successfully or not) is objective fact. Whether or not an incident should be prosecuted is not objective, and cannot be simply made into a list.  If you want to document all possible war crimes, all alleged war crimes, then this must be done with an explanation of the evidence/arguments for and against such a finding rather than blandly listing them as if you were reading the phone book.  I would support such an article, as long as it is actually balanced, rather than balancing by merely assuming another POV to counteract the supposed dominant one.  Postdlf 08:26, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * That works too, it would mean a little more information on each than I'd expected but perhaps thats for the best. FT2 08:40, Jul 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * One further comment&mdash;the very epithet of war crime implies a violation of institutional norms, so it would have to be grounded in some way in the perspective of existing legal and governmental power structures. Otherwise, it just becomes rhetoric.  Postdlf 22:10, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Existing legal structures tightly define the legal terms "crime against humanity" and "war crime". One place that they are given formal definition and legal force is the Treaty of Rome. These would provide the level of grounding you're after, if I understand your point rightly. FT2 06:22, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
 * Inherently POV. I believe all acts of war are crimes.  Others think only a few are.  Unless this is changed to an article about actual prosecutions, this will only ever be a magnet for trolling, edit wars, wikihate and pointlessness.  Delete    &mdash; Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 11:46, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC).
 * Delete - I checked this out expecting something real. Instead it is just a laundry list and if it is kept the Iraq sanctions do not qualify as war crimes under any definition.  -  T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  21:55, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Are you sure they don't count "under any definition"? If you lived in quite a few countries outside the West, you would probably cite back the Rome Statute: Genocide: 6a: "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group ... Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
 * Claiming "genocide" for enforcing UN sanctions is laughable. No matter how you choose to mis-engineer the words used to describe it. -  T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  16:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * See below for sources for your 'laughable'... if 0.5 million dead kids are able to be laughed at. FT2 09:03, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * A large chunk of the world thinks that the Iraq sanctions were calculated at least in part to further destroy in part a defeated national group (Iraq). The sanctions deliberately and knowingly inflicted conditions (lack of water etc) which brought about the group's physical destruction in part. The part that was 'physically destroyed' included around 0.5 million child non-combatant lives alone. So yes, there is a prima facie legal case.  There is also a potential legal match with Article 7, items 1(k) and 2(a). The core Statute of Rome definitions are met, at least enough to justify a balanced NPOV explaining the circumstances, and both the reasons it might be, and the reasons it might not.
 * Cite your sources for what "the world thinks" (in your opinion). - T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  16:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * See below FT2 09:03, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know if anyone above has noticed, but the page on genocide contains a long list of "alleged genocides". That list seems to work quite well, and the POV issue seems to have been overcome (albeit with substantial debate as one would expect). If a balanced view can be reached on alleged genocides, the same NPOV is possible for various other war crime.  FT2 02:11, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * That argues for deleting this list and including it in War crimes - T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  16:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Reluctant delete. The application of the term "war crime" is still too ambiguous to allow the creation of this list.  Maybe in a few more years, the case law will be settled enough, but not right now.  (As a side note, the Iraq sanctions fail to meet FT2's standard of a prima facie case because proximate cause has not been established.) Rossami 04:27, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep --Dittaeva 13:53, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Valid examples of war crimes that have been, or should have been prosecuted based upon a solid understanding of international law, can be incorporated in war crimes (as genocide appears to be handled).  Having a separate list serves no function.  Postdlf 16:11, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Sources to substantiate the claim that a large number classified the iraq sanctions as a crime were requested. A good starting point is the top 100 links at .  Notice these are not "fringe" groups, they include doctors and medical associations, members of parliament, UN officials and bodies, pressure groups, both Western and non-Western writers, media and the like. It's enough evidence that a significant part of the world does indeed seem to think this way. In addition, supporting links to US Department of Defense documents in 1991 discussing the US military's understanding of the scale of death and the US military analysis of the consequences of Iraq's inability to provide drinking water or repair its existing plants, can be found at  and includes links to the DOD Gulflink website for sources.  Other relevant pages include a BBC source and UNESCO. Finally, a legal analysis of the matter with citations can be found at, as part of a broader analysis here. FT2 09:08, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

THIS DISCUSSION IS NOW CLOSED: Results 8 delete 7 keep. I cannot consider this to be a consensus to delete, so it is staying. DJ Clayworth 21:25, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)