Assembly/AU/ 14 (XI) Page 3 heinousness of these crimes. Moral heinousness however, is not to be equated with universal jurisdiction. xvi . The issue of whether there exists universal jurisdiction over a crime is dependent on general international law and the subtleties of international rule-making. However, the categorisation or proscription of an act as an international crime is not enough to ascribe universal jurisdiction to States for the proscribed act. 11. It is comm. on to find general and expansive assertions including a wider range of international crimes, than is actually the case, within the remit of universal jurisdiction. For instance, the Third Restatement of the Law: The Foreign Relations Law of the United States mentions the offences of piracy, slave trade, genocide, war crimes, attacks on or hijacking of aircrafts, and presumably certain acts of terrorism as falling within the scope of the concept of universal jurisdiction. xvii It is also not uncommon to find some commentators, especially within the field of international relations, xviii and human rights organisations and NGOs adopting this expansive view of universal jurisdiction. xix 12. The issue of universal jurisdiction over the international crime of slavery and slave trading, contrary to commonly held opinion is not as straightforward as the crime of piracy. xx It has also been contended that the recognition of universal jurisdiction over slavery and slave trading can be traced to the Geneva Convention on the High Seas, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1926 Convention To Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery and its Protocol in 1953 and Supplementary Convention in 1956. xxi However, there is nothing in the text of these provisions conferring States with universal jurisdiction, indeed most of the provisions direct its obligations to the High Contracting Parties; obligations which the parties contractually agreed to and can denounce. xxii Professor Kontorovich argues that, “At most, international treaties on slave trading created “delegated jurisdiction” whereby several nations conveyed to one another the right to exercise some of their jurisdictional powers with respect to a particular offence, effectively making each State an agent of the others. Since such arrangements rest on State consent and the traditional jurisdiction of each State party to the agreements, they in no way…can be considered as examples of universal jurisdiction”. xxiii 13. Proponents of universal jurisdiction over slavery and slave trading, like Kenneth Randall concede that the international instruments on slavery do not explicitly confer universal jurisdiction, however they assert that such universal jurisdiction exists in customary international law. They argue that customary international law as seen in the extensive efforts to abolish slavery, even in the absence of explicit provisions in international instruments on slavery providing for universal jurisdiction, sustains universal jurisdiction over these crimes. xxiv However, it is doubtful if customary law sustains this assertion because to the extent that the requirements for a rule to emerge as custom in international law include State practice in support of the rule together with opinio juris, no State practice exists where States have assumed universal jurisdiction over slavery and slave trade. 14. The Statutes of the Tribunals established after the World War in 1945 in Nuremberg and in the Far East (Tokyo) did not provide that universal jurisdiction exists for crimes against humanity, neither do the trials conducted under the Statutes and the various war crimes trials conducted in the aftermath of the War support universal jurisdiction for war crimes. This is because the trials were part of the terms of surrender of the vanquished States to the victorious Allied Powers. However, it would seem that universal jurisdiction arguably extended