4 itself, overcoming a basic shortcoming and its past insufficiencies regarding lack of capacity to try and to punish those responsible for grave violations of human rights and of International Humanitarian Law.13 The travaux préparatoires of the 1998 Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court (ICC) led to prompt recognition, within its sphere of application,14 of individual international criminal responsibility, and this constitutes a major step forward, in terms of legal doctrine, in the struggle against impunity of the most serious international crimes. 10. Said initiative has provided new impetus to the struggle of the international community against impunity, as a per se violation of human rights,15 by affirming and crystallizing the international criminal responsibility of the individual for said violations, thus seeking to prevent future crimes.16 Criminalization of grave violations of human rights and of International Humanitarian Law has, in our time, been expressed in the enshrinement of the principle of universal jurisdiction.17 11. In the framework of the inter-American human rights system, in the Paniagua Morales et al. versus Guatemala case (also known as the “White Van” case), the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights issued a clear warning statement regarding the duty of the State to combat impunity.18 The Court affirmed the duty of the State19 to Tribunal Pénal International pour l'ex-Yougoslavie, Paris, Montchrestien, 1994, pp. 15-133; Antonio Cassese, "The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Human Rights", 2 European Human Rights Law Review (1997) pp. 329-352; Kai Ambos, "Defensa Penal ante el Tribunal de la ONU para la Antigua Yugoslavia", 25 Revista del Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (1997) pp. 11-28; and cf., on the latter, v.g., R.S. Lee, "The Rwanda Tribunal", 9 Leiden Journal of International Law (1996) pp. 3761; [Several Authors], "The Rwanda Tribunal: Its Role in the African Context", 37 International Review of the Red Cross (1997) n. 321, pp. 665-715 (studies by F. Harhoff, C. Aptel, D. Wembou, C.M. Peter, and G. Erasmus and N. Fourie); O. Dubois, "Rwanda's National Criminal Courts and the International Tribunal", 37 International Review of the Red Cross (1997) n. 321, pp. 717-731, and –especially- adoption of the 1998 Rome Statute by the permanent International Criminal Court. 13 . And, especially, for acts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; Bengt Broms, "The Establishment of an International Criminal Court", 24 Israel Yearbook on Human Rights (1994) pp. 145-146. 14 . Probably some of the current controversies among internationalist jurists (myself included) and the criminalists will last some time, regarding certain aspects of the Rome Statute. While I do not intend to refer to them here, in the instant Separate Opinion I merely call attention to the superior universal values that underlie all the issue of establishment of a permanent international criminal jurisdiction. Let us furthermore recall that the 1998 Rome Statute enshrined general principles of criminal law (nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege, non-retroactivity ratione personae, individual criminal responsibility, exclusion of persons under 18 from the competence of the Tribunal, irrelevance of official position, responsibility of supervisors and other superiors, non-extinguishment –non-applicability of the statutes of limitations-, the element of intentionality, circumstances exempting from criminal responsibility, factual and legal errors, superior orders and legal provisions), despite the conceptual differences between the Delegations of droit civil and common law countries. 15 . W.A. Schabas, "Sentencing by International Tribunals: A Human Rights Approach", 7 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law (1997) pp. 461-517. 16 . Cf., in this regard, e.g., D. Thiam, "Responsabilité internationale de l'individu en matière criminelle", in International Law on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century - Views from the International Law Commission / Le droit international à l'aube du XXe siècle - Réflexions de codificateurs, N.Y., U.N., 1997, pp. 329-337. 17 . A.A. Cançado Trindade, Tratado de Direito Internacional dos Direitos Humanos, volume III, 1st. ed., Porto Alegre/Brasil, S.A. Fabris Ed., 2003, p. 413; and cf. A.A. Cançado Trindade, Tratado de Direito Internacional dos Direitos Humanos, volume II, 1st. ed., Porto Alegre/Brasil, S.A. Fabris Ed., 1999, pp. 385400 and 404-412. 18 . In its Judgment of 08.03.1998 on the merits in that case, the Court conceived of impunity as “the total lack of investigation, prosecution, capture, trial and conviction of those responsible for violations of the rights protected by the American Convention, in view of the fact that the State has the obligation to