The text, for paragraphs 5 and 6 of article 23, asserts that "the Court may have jurisdiction over a juridical person for a crime under this statute", where a juridical person is defined as "a corporation whose concrete and real objective is private ends".

Under the terms of the text, the ICC can try such corporations if individuals convicted of major crimes controlled them and committed those crimes "acting on behalf of and with consent of that juridical person and in the course of its activities".

The text received a generally favourable reception in the Working Group of the Whole on Friday. It still must go before the Committee of the Whole, but, if it is accepted, some delegates think it could be a breakthrough in determining corporate responsibility for crimes against humanity.

"Potentially, if the head of a corporation is involved in genocide or other major crimes, but says he can't pay reparations because he doesn't have the money, the corporation itself could be sued for damages," one supporter from an Asian delegation said.

More importantly, the language could be a first step in determining the responsibility of private corporations, rather than just individuals and governments, in crimes against humanity, he added. 

There is no shortage of examples of involvement by corporations in war crimes, with perhaps the most notorious one in recent years being the role that the privately-owned Radio and Television Milles Collines played in inciting ethnic Hutus to slaughter Hutu moderates and minority Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

The United Nations blamed the top Milles Collines officials for providing "hate propaganda" that instructed listeners to murder Tutsis, including messages to "chop them up and dump them in Lake Victoria". Last year, the station's chief executive officer was among suspects indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, for genocide.

Other corporations have fallen afoul of rights groups for different reasons. Amnesty International, in a recent report, accused British Petroleum of helping to finance the training of paramilitary groups who protect oil refineries in Colombia, and who have been linked to atrocities against civilians there. British Petroleum has denied the charges.

The question remains open about how much responsibility a corporation might have as a "juridical person" under the current guidelines. As one delegate explained, "Some countries don't really have a conception of what the concept means."

Although France - the key backer of the language - and Britain have legislation that recognises that corporate entities could be juridical persons, many other legal systems have no such concept, he added.

Despite that, the passages on corporate responsibility stand a good change of widespread acceptance. One of the backers of the paragraphs counted Britain, the United States, Pakistan and many African states among countries ready to accept it.

The price for that acceptance has been a considerable amendment of the language, noted Gilbert Bitti of the human rights bureau of the French Department of Justice. Under the current language, it is explicit that a corporation cannot be a state entity or a non-profit body, but a clearly private company, he said.

Nor is the language directed toward "clearly criminal" groups, whether drug cartels, terrorist organisations or the like, even if those groups take on some form of corporate identity, the Asian delegation member added.