Search: Complementarity SAIF GADDAFI
09 May Why Does the United States Continue to Oppose International Courts?
...investigate individual suspects and seek indictments against them as long as they fall under the subject matter jurisdiction defined by the Rome Statute. The ICC’s process is characterized by deferential complementarity. Its primary duty is to ensure that national court systems are given sufficient opportunity to “investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of committing atrocity crimes referred to the Court” (p. 75). The ICC takes initiative only after national courts are unwilling or unable to carry out proper investigations or prosecutions. After all, “the long-term objective is to strengthen the capabilities...
15 Mar SCSL Symposium: A Legal Legacy that Opens the Way to Justice in Challenging Places and Times–Part I
...the atrocities are committed on the territory of ICC member states, the hybrid approach can be viewed as a form of “complementarity” that avoids taking the situation to The Hague but does not rely on exclusively national trials. It can be a better alternative than a single global court in The Hague that is expensive, distant and easy for local leaders to demonize, and national courts where it can be very hard to properly try powerful actors, particularly if these courts were dysfunctional before the violence and were further disabled...14 Oct Guest Post: Do All Roads Lead to Rome? Why Ukraine Resorts to Declarations Rather than Ratification of the Rome Statute
...regarding the repercussions of the ad hoc declarations in particular and ratification as a whole. For example, concerns over the new declaration being in breach of Article 5 of the Minsk II agreement which provides pardon and amnesty to those involved in the conflict in the Donbass region. However, under international law such amnesty has consistently been interpreted as excluding international crimes and gross human rights violations. Therefore, if Ukrainian courts are unable or unwilling to investigate and prosecute such crimes, the ICC’s complementarity principle can be activated, as it...09 Apr LJIL Symposium: A Consideration of ‘On the Functions of International Courts: An Appraisal in Light of Their Burgeoning Public Authority’
...democratic rights. In this light, it is worth looking at the rise of international adjudication in the post-Cold-War world along with the increasing attention to the problem of weak and failed states. The decisions of international adjudicators in the international criminal law and human rights law areas often respond directly to political and legal institutional failures or gaps at the level of the state. The authority of international adjudicators thus may be seen as relative to that of other institutions. This is explicitly contemplated by the conception of “complementarity” that...21 Feb US Troops in Iraq: Likely out of Reach of the ICC
...deployment described in Res. 1546 and the letters from the US and Iraqi representatives accompanying that resolution (including the statement in the US letter that the MNF operate in a framework “in which the contributing states have responsibility for exercising jurisdiction over their personnel”) meet the requirement of Art. 16 and preclude ICC jurisdiction. Finally, Art. 17 of the ICC statute requires “complementarity.” That means if a local or national investigation or prosecution of the conduct at issue is taking place, the Court is prohibited from exercising its jurisdiction. The...
30 Jun Language Matters: The Role of the Presumption of Innocence in Seeking Justice During the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
...meaning of ‘public authority’. Not surprisingly those who are directly involved in the prosecution are included – judges, prosecutors, police, and investigators. However, public authorities are not limited to those who have a direct connection with the criminal case. For example, a member of the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division was considered a public authority. In national jurisdictions public authorities include people who are legislators and those employed by the government. In international jurisdictions the term can extend to employees of the relevant international court,...
09 Jan From Policy to Practice: Operationalising Environmental Justice
...ambitious vision that could catalyse a long-awaited shift in how the OTP investigates and prosecutes such cases. More importantly perhaps, the Policy has the potential to foster investigations and prosecutions of environmental harm at the domestic level, consistent with the principle of positive complementarity. However, translating this vision into practice at both the national and international levels requires overcoming significant legal, institutional and practical challenges, which the Policy partially acknowledges. Uncharted Legal Territory The current legal landscape remains largely unexplored. Environmental harm often unfolds over years or even decades, crossing...16 Jan Guest Post: Keitner–Jones v. United Kingdom and the Individual Responsibility of State Officials
...and civil proceedings seems unjustified, since (as the Chamber acknowledges at para. 207) “[t]here is no doubt that individuals may in certain circumstances also be personally liable for wrongful acts which engage the State’s responsibility.” Unless a Grand Chamber revisits the Jones opinion, it appears likely that, conceptually incoherent as it might be, the law of foreign official immunity will develop for the time being along two tracks: the non-recognition of immunity ratione materiae for international crimes that is a logical corollary of the Rome Statute’s complementarity regime and that...
21 Apr ICC Sanctions Symposium: The Unprecedented Attack Against the ICC Prosecutor–The Pitfalls of Being a National of a ‘Less-Powerful’ State
[Satang Nabaneh is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, and the Founder and Executive Director of Law Hub Gambia. She currently pursues research interests including international human rights law and monitoring mechanisms, democratization in Africa, and Gambian constitutional law.] On September 2, 2020, the Trump administration announced that the United States had designated the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and the head of the Office of the Prosecutor’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity, and Cooperation Division (JCCD), Phakiso Mochochoko, for sanctions. These...25 Sep Palestine and the ICC: Some Notes on Why It Is Not a Closed Chapter
...we are not facing a possible gap in the Rome Statute? It can be further asked which category the 3 April decision falls in, i.e. on which basis did the Prosecutor actually decide not to open the investigation? Article 53(1) ICC Statute outlines three elements for the Prosecutor to consider in order to decide whether to open the investigation: a) the information available, which must provide a reasonable basis to believe that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed; b) the complementarity principle, i.e. that the...