A/HRC/28/59 maintenance. It seems to be immaterial whether it was spent on salaries or for lethal gas.” 4 To hold them criminally liable, the Military Tribunal found it sufficient to prove that two of the defendants, Flick and Steinbrinck, regularly provided substantial funds to a State organization responsible for the mass extermination of Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, and other crimes under international law. The Nuremberg Trials were not held under the auspices of the United Nations and the crimes against humanity adjudicated in Nuremberg were of an unprecedented nature, but the ruling was nevertheless a landmark judgement, emphasizing that individuals may incur liability under international criminal law for financially contributing to a State organization responsible for mass extermination, war crimes and other gross violations of human rights. 10. At the United Nations, the question of whether States, international financial institutions or private finance should refrain from lending to States involved in gross human rights violations has mainly been discussed in the context of sanctions. Several sets of economic sanctions, or lending bans, have been called for by the General Assembly or imposed by the Security Council, with the aim of curtailing or minimizing gross human rights violations. In the 1960s, the General Assembly requested the World Bank and other international institutions to refrain from lending to South Africa and Portugal because of their poor human rights records. While the request was initially fruitless, the World Bank did stop approving further loans to the apartheid regime after 1966;5 the International Monetary Fund (IMF), however, continued lending to South Africa until 1983. Human rights concerns were at the core of the first comprehensive sanctions regime of the United Nations, imposed on the white minority regime in Southern Rhodesia by the Security Council in resolution 253 (1968), which included a prohibition on making investment funds or any other financial or economic resources available to the illegal regime. 11. In 1977, Antonio Cassese was appointed as Special Rapporteur by the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities with the specific mandate of assessing the link between the financial aid then being allocated to the Pinochet military regime and the human rights violations suffered by the Chilean population. His report analysed the political, institutional, economic, budgetary, fiscal and financial conditions then prevailing in Chile and considered how financial aid contributed in this context to the commission of the crimes of the regime, and several countries decided to not lend to the Pinochet regime because of its human rights record (see E/CN.4/Sub.2/412, vols. I–IV). 12. The pros and cons of more comprehensive economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa were feverishly debated for more than two decades. While mandatory sanctions imposed on the regime by the Security Council in resolutions 181 (1963) and 418 (1977) were limited to an arms embargo and to a prohibition of military and nuclear cooperation, the General Assembly repeatedly urged the Security Council to consider comprehensive mandatory sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa, condemned transnational corporations and financial institutions that continued to collaborate with South Africa and repeatedly called upon the IMF “to terminate credit and other assistance to the racist regime of South Africa”. 6 In 1987, in resolution 42/23B, the General Assembly urged all States to induce transnational corporations, banks and financial 4 5 6 United States v. Flick, Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, vol. VI (Washington, D.C., United States Government Printing Office, 1952). See Samuel A. Bleicher, “UN v. IBRD: a dilemma of functionalism” International Organization, vol. 4, No.1 (winter 1970) and E/CN.4/Sub.2/1987/8/Rev.1, para. 54. See, for example, General Assembly resolutions 40/64A and 41/35B. 5