On 1 March 2022, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock accused the Russian President Vladimir Putin's government of waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. Speaking at the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), she drew explicit links to the Nazi war of aggression in order to legitimise sanctions against Russia as she stressed the UN's mission to work for peace enshrined in the UN charter. Twelve months earlier, in February 2021, the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz sentenced a forty-four-year-old Syrian citizen to four and a half years’ imprisonment. Based on the ‘shared values of humanity’, the verdict made headlines as the court explicitly cited the universal jurisdiction principle enshrined in the Völkerstrafgesetzbuch (VStGB) that had been enacted in 2002 to bring German law into accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.1 Since 2002, German courts have adopted these international law principles and legal norms in a series of legal actions against foreigners to prosecute crimes against humanity.

2022 年 3 月 1 日，德国外交部长安娜莱娜·贝尔博克指责俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京政府对乌克兰发动侵略战争。在联合国 (UN) 大会上发言时，她明确地将纳粹侵略战争与纳粹侵略战争联系起来，以便使对俄罗斯的制裁合法化，同时强调联合国宪章所载的联合国为和平而努力的使命。十二个月前，即 2021 年 2 月，科布伦茨地区高等法院判处一名四十四岁的叙利亚公民四年半监禁。基于“人类的共同价值观”，该判决成为头条新闻，因为法院明确引用了 Völkerstrafgesetzbuch 中所载的普遍管辖权原则(VStGB) 于 2002 年颁布，旨在使德国法律符合国际刑事法院罗马规约。1自 2002 年以来，德国法院在一系列针对外国人的法律行动中采用了这些国际法原则和法律规范，以起诉危害人类罪。