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For a very long time, the most terrible crimes were committed in countless conflicts without the perpetrators ever being prosecuted or even investigated. Peace had to prevail over justice, at any price, and therefore also at the price of impunity for the criminals - such was the prevailing principle. With the exception of the Nuremberg (and Tokyo) trials in 1945-1946, it was only after the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s, that international criminal justice finally began to assert itself. The road ahead looks uncertain, however, particularly in a world where power relations are returning on all sides, and where the fight against impunity risks being marginalised – if not stifled – in the name of the raison d’état.