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Benefits of International Criminal Court

The ICC reduces impunity not only by punishing perpetrators, but also by allowing victims to participate in trials and seek redress.9 These are new progressive features in international criminal proceedings that hold victims accountable and bring justice closer to reprisals and reparations. By November 2012, the ICC had received more than 12,000 applications to participate in the proceedings, most of which had been accepted. The first decision on reparation for victims was rendered on 7 August 2012.10 The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. The United States participated in the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Court. In 1998, however, the United States was one of only seven countries to vote against the Rome Statute, along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen. U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. In 2002, President George W. Bush effectively “disempowered” the treaty, sending a note to the United Nations Secretary-General stating that the United States no longer intended to ratify the treaty and had no obligations to it. Since then, however, the United States` relationship with the Court has been complicated, but often positive (see question 7 below).

With regard to rebels and state agents, some argue that while the Colombian peace process introduces a judicial program with disproportionately low sentences given the crimes involved, other countries could cite this as a precedent for devising equally light penalties for perpetrators in their own courts, that permeate and undermine the ICC`s mission. To understand the idea of complementarity, we need to understand the alternative. The international community has the choice of establishing an international tribunal with primary or complementary jurisdiction. After World War II, the Allied powers launched the first international war crimes tribunal, known as the Nuremberg Trials, to prosecute senior Nazi officials. It was not until the 1990s that many governments adopted the idea of a permanent tribunal to hold perpetrators accountable for the world`s most serious crimes. The United Nations had already established ad hoc international criminal tribunals to deal with war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, but many experts in international law considered them to be ineffective and inadequate deterrents. The ICC aims to complement, not replace, national criminal justice systems; it only prosecutes cases where States are unwilling or unable to do so. The issue of criminal justice and punishment for serious crimes in Colombia has become particularly relevant in the peace negotiations between the government and the FARC in Havana, Cuba. The talks, which began in November 2012, focused on six formal negotiating points: land reform, political participation, illicit drugs, victims, ending the conflict and implementing the peace agreement. In the global fight against impunity, national justice systems remain the first line of defence. National courts 18.

Ratification of the Rome Statute places states in a framework of international support to develop national laws and capacities to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The ICC aims to complement rather than replace national courts. It can only act if it has been established that national courts are unable or unwilling to hear a case. In addition, it exercises jurisdiction only over crimes committed after the entry into force of its law in 2002. On March 15, 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would impose visa bans on ICC officials involved in a possible investigation of U.S. citizens into alleged crimes in Afghanistan. He hinted that the same policy could be used to deter icc efforts to investigate nationals of allied countries, including Israelis, and said the United States would be ready to take further action, including economic sanctions, “if the ICC does not change course.” The Trump administration confirmed in early April 2019 that it had revoked the visa of ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. 2 See, for example, “The International Criminal Court offers new hope for a lasting reduction in the phenomenon of impunity”, and the establishment of the ICC is “undoubtedly the most significant recent development in the long struggle of the international community to promote the cause of justice and the rule of law”, Report of the Secretary-General, 23 August 2004, S/2004/616, para. 49; “The Council notes that the fight against impunity for the most serious crimes of international concern has been strengthened by the work of the International Criminal Court”, Statement by the President of the Security Council, 26 June 2010, S/PRST/2010/11; “The members of the Security Council recall the contribution of the […] International Criminal Court [.] in the fight against impunity for the most serious crimes affecting the international community”, Security Council Press Release on the Contribution of Courts and Tribunals to the Fight against Impunity, 5 July 2012, SC/10700.

At the heart of the new system, which emerged from the Rome Statute, was the idea that courts at the national level should deal primarily with serious crime cases.