Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

The jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has largely settled that a ‘widespread attack’ under article 7 of the Rome Statute concerning crimes against humanity requires a multiplicity of underlying acts. However, a single act whose effects are of extraordinary magnitude, such as the deployment of a nuclear weapon, has theoretically survived in the jurisprudence of the ICC, creating a possible jurisdictional ambiguity. By conducting a statutory interpretation of the ‘widespread’ element in article 7(1), this thesis sets out to reconcile the tension between the strict textual limitations of the Rome Statute, and the functional necessity to prosecute contemporary mass-casualty events resulting from one single act. This thesis demonstrates that the extraordinary magnitude of the act transforms it into a massive multiplicity of underlying legal acts as the outcome of that single physical act by the perpetrator. Because the attack simultaneously victimises a multitude of individuals, it immediately satisfies the quantitative ‘multiple commission of acts’ threshold demanded by article 7(2)(a). It is therefore not the mere multiplicity of legal acts, but the extraordinary magnitude of the physical event that produces them, which carries the singular act across the ‘widespread’ threshold of article 7(1). The ‘widespread’ element under article 7 of the Rome Statute thus legally encompasses the ‘singular effect of an inhumane act of extraordinary magnitude’. This thesis ultimately suggests that the ambiguity surrounding the ‘singular act of extraordinary magnitude’ threshold is a fundamental issue of terminology and such, the concept survives, but strictly as a description of a factual event and not a legal one.