The term "crimes against humanity" is potentially ambiguous because of the ambiguity of the word "humanity", which originally meant the quality of being human (first recorded in AD1384) but more recently took on another meaning as a synonym of mankind (first recorded in AD 1450). War of aggression, war crimes, murder, massacres, dehumanization, genocide, ethnic cleansing, deportations, unethical human experimentation, extrajudicial punishments including summary executions, the use of weapons of mass destruction, state terrorism or state sponsorship of terrorism, death squads, kidnappings and forced disappearances, the use of child soldiers, unjust imprisonment, enslavement, torture, rape, political repression, racial discrimination, religious persecution and other human rights abuses may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention, so an international effort to establish such a treaty, led by the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, is currently underway. The law of crimes against humanity has primarily been developed as a result of the evolution of customary international law. Since the Nuremberg trials, crimes against humanity have been prosecuted by other international courts (such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court) as well as by domestic courts. Initially considered for legal use, widely in international law, following the Holocaust, a global standard of human rights was articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place during the Nuremberg trials. They do not need to be part of an official policy, but they only need to be tolerated by authorities. They are not isolated or sporadic events because they are part of a government policy or they are part of a widespread practice of atrocities which is tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war. Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic criminal acts which are committed by or on behalf of a de facto authority, usually by or on behalf of a state, that grossly violate human rights.
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