Abstract
This paper examines the legal potential to prosecute human trafficking as a crime against humanity (CAH) in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the ICC has been equipped with the legal tools necessary to prosecute human trafficking, it has not yet brought a single trafficking case to the Court. In order to fully comprehend the bar for prosecution of human trafficking as a CAH at the ICC, the paper applies the CAH framework to the situation of the persecuted Rohingya minority in Myanmar and Thailand in Southeast Asia. Chapter 1 will briefly introduce the rationale behind the hypothesis as well as present the limitations of the scope of the thesis. Chapter 2 shall examine the general characteristics of human trafficking including the universal definition in the Palermo Protocol. Chapter 3 will deal with the CAH framework, including the customary nature of human trafficking as CAH, as well as conducting an in-depth analysis of the chapeau requirements of CAH in the Rome Statute. Chapter 4 will study the complementarity requirement and the gravity threshold, two of the most contentious concepts concerning jurisdiction and admissibility of the ICC. Finally, chapter 5 will apply the international law on human trafficking and the CAH framework to the case study on the Rohingya minority. The objective is to analyse whether there is a prima facie case concerning the CAH perpetrated against Rohingya in Myanmar and Thailand that may justify human trafficking persecutions by the ICC engaging individual criminal responsibility.