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 ICC Structure and Basics |
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Who created the ICC?
Is the ICC part of the United Nations?
Who can be tried and for what crimes by the ICC?
Are there any limits on ICC jurisdiction?
Why do we need an international criminal court?
What are the primary instruments of the ICC?
Which countries have ratified the Rome Statute?
- The ICC Statute was adopted in Rome in 1998 by 120 countries
after several years of negotiations at the United Nations.
The ICC Statute came into force on July 1, 2002, following the required
60th ratification. 139 countries ultimately signed the ICC Statute, and over 100 states have ratified or acceded to it.
- Support for the ICC has been led by a coalition of America's
friends and allies, including all members of the European
Union and all members of NATO except the US and Turkey.
- The ICC is supported by many states that have recently
experienced severe crises as a result of ongoing impunity
or attempts to try human rights violators within their domestic
systems, including Argentina, Cambodia, Colombia, Croatia,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Paraguay,
Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Uganda.
- The US was involved with the ICC negotiations until early
2002 and made extensive contributions to the ICC Statute
and its indispensable supplemental documents. These include
provisions giving strong deference to national courts, an
important role for the Security Council, due process rights
drawn from the US Bill of Rights, and the definitions and
elements of the ICC crimes.
- The ICC is not a UN body; it is not under the jurisdiction
of the General Assembly or of the Secretary-General. It
is an independent international court with its own legal
capacity, created and governed by its own treaty. It will
not be administered or paid for through the UN. It is financed
by, and accountable to, only those states that have chosen
to ratify the ICC Statute. It is not located at UN headquarters,
but at The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands.
- The Court is linked to the UN in at least one crucial
respect: the Security Council has the authority to refer
investigations to it, or to temporarily suspend them.
If the UN Security Council refers a situation to the ICC,
then the UN membership as a whole may be assessed some
portion of the Court's expenses relating to that specific
investigation.
The
International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world's
first permanent court with jurisdiction to try individuals
accused of some of the most serious international crimes, as detailed in the ICC's Rome Statute and Elements of Crimes:
- Genocide -- intentionally committing an "act of
genocide" in order to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group. Acts of genocide include
killing members of the group, seriously wounding members
of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part, imposing measures to prevent births,
and forcibly transferring children of the group to another
group (for example, the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust
and of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994).
- Crimes against humanity -- acts
involving the multiple commission of one or more acts such
as, for example, murder, extermination, enslavement, persecution, the
forcible transfer of a population, torture, or rape. Such acts must be part of a) a widespread or systematic
attack against any civilian population and b) a State
or organizational policy to commit such attack (for example,
the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Kosovo
in the 1990's included crimes against humanity).
- Serious war crimes -- crimes in violation of well-accepted
laws of war, in particular when committed as part of a plan
or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such
crimes (for example, the targeting of civilians in Sarajevo
by snipers during the Bosnian conflict).
- The ICC can only exercise jurisdiction over crimes occurring
after July 1, 2002, the official start-up date of the Court.
- The Court does not have universal jurisdiction. The ICC can only exercise jurisdiction over a crime(s) committed on the territory or by
a citizen of a state that has either ratified the Court's
Statute or has specially consented to its jurisdiction over
the situation in which the crime occurred.
If this is satisfied, then a state party
to the ICC Statute or the ICC Prosecutor (with the approval
of the judges) can refer a situation in which ICC crimes
are suspected of having been committed to the Court for investigation.
If the U.N. Security Council refers a situation to the
ICC using the Council's enforcement authority under the
UN Charter, the jurisdictional requirements do not need to be
fulfilled.
- The ICC can only look into situations that are "the most
serious crimes of concern to the international community
as a whole." In general, this means that the ICC will only
take a case if multiple or very massive atrocities have been deliberately planned.
- The ICC is designed as a court of last resort. The Court
will defer to national proceedings -- whether or not they
lead to prosecution -- except if it concludes that the state
in question is incapable of acting because, for example,
it has no functioning judicial system, or is unwilling to
act because, for example, it has acted in bad faith.
- There is no existing court like the ICC.
- Unlike the International Court of Justice or "World
Court," which is a UN organ and can only decide disputes
between states, the ICC is a treaty-based criminal court
that can only try individuals for designated atrocity
crimes.
- Unlike the two ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals
for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which were created
by the UN Security Council to deal with atrocity crimes
in those regions during specific conflicts, the ICC
is a permanent court that could, depending on the circumstances,
investigate and prosecute any individual accused of
committing an atrocity crime within the ICC's jurisdiction
after July 1, 2002.
- The ICC was formed as a universal response to past and present atrocities. Its creation is the culmination of fifty years of international efforts through the United Nations to create a permanent international judicial institution to try heinous crimes that are condemned by all governments, religions, cultures and peoples.
- Most of history's worst killers have gone unpunished.
Josef Stalin said that, "[a] single death is a tragedy,
a million deaths is a statistic." The ICC represents a strong
and growing commitment by the international community to
end impunity for atrocity crimes in the 21st Century.
- After violent armed conflicts or other massive assaults
on civilian populations, many states remain mired in cycles
of violence and retribution. Prosecuting individuals for
atrocity crimes can:
- Achieve justice for the victims and for society and
help create respect for the rule of law;
- Counter attempts to blame nations or ethnic, religious,
or other groups as a whole for the crimes of individuals;
- Isolate and incapacitate criminal leaders so that
they can be removed from active political participation;
- Acknowledge and condemn the suffering of victims and
survivors;
- Establish an accurate historical record; and
- Act as a deterrent to future arch criminals.
- These benefits can be advanced by the mere existence of
the ICC. States will be encouraged to investigate and prosecute
atrocity crimes because, if they do not, the ICC may find
it necessary to pursue its own investigations and prosecutions.
- Rome Statute, Date of Adoption: 7/17/1998, Date of Entry in Force: 7/1/2002
- Rules of Procedure and Evidence, Date of Adoption: 9/9/2002; Date of Entry in Force: 09/09/2002
- Elements of Crimes, Date of Adoption: 9/9/2002; Date of Entry in Force: 9/9/2002
- Regulations of the Court, Date of Adoption: 5/26/2004; Date of Entry in Force: 5/26/2004; As amended 6/14/07 and 11/14/07 (amendments entered into force on 12/18/07)
- Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the ICC, Date of Adoption: 9/9/2002, Date of Entry in Force: 7/22/2004
- Code of Judicial Ethics, Date of Adoption: 3/9/2005, Date of Entry in Force: 3/9/2005
- Negotiated Relationship Agreement between the ICC and the UN, Date of Adoption: 10/4/2004, Date of Entry in Force: 10/4/2004
- Financial Regulations and Rules, Date of Adoption: 9/9/2002
- Staff Regulations, Date of Adoption: 9/12/2003, Date of Entry in Force: 9/12/2003
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