Drug trafficking: A crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court?

Drug trafficking is a criminal activity that has become an international problem of growing magnitude. In some regions it is an emerging source of instability that threatens to jeopardize international security. Given the danger of this phenomenon, some states have tried to make acts of drug trafficking fall within the jurisdiction of an international criminal court. Although no agreement about its inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was finally reached, the possibility of qualifying such acts as crimes against humanity has been raised from different fronts. This would allow their investigation or prosecution by the International Criminal Court itself. This paper analyses to what extent criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking can fulfill the contextual elements of crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute and, if so, to what extent acts of drug trafficking, despite not being expressly included in the Rome Statute, can be considered as "other inhumane acts" of a similar character to the acts referred to in Article 7 ( 1) of the Rome Statute.