126 1. The Interpretation of the Text of Article 5 of the Statute 282. Notwithstanding the fact that the ICTY Statute is legally a very different instrument from an international treaty, in the interpretation of the Statute it is nonetheless permissible to be guided by the principle applied by the International Court of Justice with regard to treaty interpretation in its Advisory Opinion on Competence of the General Assembly for the Admission of a State to the United Nations: “The first duty of a tribunal which is called upon to interpret and apply the provisions of a treaty is to endeavour to give effect to them in their natural and ordinary meaning in the context in which they occur”. 346 283. The ordinary meaning of Article 5 makes it clear that this provision does not require all crimes against humanity to have been perpetrated with a discriminatory intent. Such intent is only made necessary for one sub-category of those crimes, namely “persecutions” provided for in Article 5 (h). 284. In addition to such textual interpretation, a logical construction of Article 5 also leads to the conclusion that, generally speaking, this requirement is not laid down for all crimes against humanity. Indeed, if it were otherwise, why should Article 5(h) specify that “persecutions” fall under the Tribunal’s jurisdiction if carried out “on political, racial and religious grounds”? This specification would be illogical and superfluous. It is an elementary rule of interpretation that one should not construe a provision or part of a provision as if it were superfluous and hence pointless: the presumption is warranted that law-makers enact or agree upon rules that are well thought out and meaningful in all their elements. 285. As rightly submitted by the Prosecution, the interpretation of Article 5 in the light of its object and purpose bears out the above propositions. The aim of those drafting the Statute was to make all crimes against humanity punishable, including those which, while fulfilling all the conditions required by the notion of such crimes, may not have been perpetrated on political, racial or religious grounds as specified in paragraph (h) of Article 5. In light of the humanitarian goals of the framers of the Statute, one fails to see why they should have seriously restricted the class of offences coming within the purview of “crimes against humanity”, thus leaving outside this class all the possible instances of serious and widespread or systematic crimes against civilians on account only of their Case No.: -94-1-A 15 July 1999