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...
05 Aug Introduction to the Symposium on The Principle of ne bis in idem in International Criminal Law by Gaiane Nuridzhanian
...an excellent discussion of the inter-jurisdictional ne bis in idem rules in Article 20 (2) and (3) of the Rome Statute of the ICC. Dr. Iryna Marchuk, University of Copenhagen, and Dr. Aloka Wanigasuriya, University of Southern Denmark, investigate a topical issue of interaction between ne bis in idem and the principle of complementarity in the context of domestic prosecution of war crimes committed in Ukraine. Dr. Daniel R. Ruhweza of Makerere University in Uganda provides an insightful overview of challenges arising in connection with the application of ne bis...
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 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...
22 Mar Law, Not War: Why Cuba Should Join the International Criminal Court in an Effort to Avert American Aggression
...want to insulate itself from ICC scrutiny and demonstrate good faith with respect to international criminal law, it could immediately release all remaining political prisoners not involved in covert operations for the United States, as it did in January 2025. It could also signal that it will not only join the ICC but also cooperate closely with the Court. History suggests that states that engage in genuine and constructive cooperation with the ICC are rarely targeted by the institution because of the Court’s emphasis on positive complementarity, meaning that the...
04 Jan A Response to Mariniello About the Palestine Investigation
...the independent and impartial exercise of my mandate under the Rome Statute, with full respect for the principle of complementarity. There is simply no substantive difference between the two statements. Both remind the parties that the Court has jurisdiction over the situation in Palestine. Both mention the possibility of specific crimes being or about to be committed. Both mention the Prosecutor’s concern at at that possibility. Both make clear that the OTP will investigate crimes committed in Palestine when appropriate. Both are, in short, preventive statements. There is, however, a...