Search: Complementarity SAIF GADDAFI
11 Jul The New STCoA: The Good, the Bad, the Curious, and the Terrible
...Statute to deny the Prosecutor proprio motu power full stop — regardless of why Ukraine might not refer a particular suspect to the tribunal. I also believe that giving a state complete primacy over an ICT is unprecedented (for a reason) in the history of international criminal law. Not even the ICC is so subordinated, despite the principle of complementarity, because the Court’s own judges have the final say over whether a case is admissible. Conclusion For too long — more than three years — too many states and scholars...30 Oct Canada Charges Rwandan of Genocide
...competing jurisdictions will coordinate their prosecutions remains to be seen. Whether the international criminal tribunals will take cognizance of third country prosecutions as part of their determination of whether to prosecute is uncertain. And whether these third country national courts will adopt the ICC’s approach of complementarity and deference to the primary national court prosecution is even more uncertain. Certainly the Spanish judge that issued an arrest warrant against three American soldiers exonerated by the United States military justice system suggests that in at least some circumstances they will not....
02 Apr A Powerful Tool for Human Rights, Wrongly Used Against the ICC: The Actual Impact of Sanctions
...them unable to enter into business transactions, move currency between banks, travel freely, or purchase basic goods and services. Despite the global focus on targeting human rights violators, in 2020 the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), based on an Executive Order of former U.S. President Trump, imposed sanctions on personnel from the International Criminal Court. Madame Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda became a specially designated national, or “SDN,” along with Phakiso Mocochoko, head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division at the ICC. These economic sanctions were in...22 Oct Will the Mbeki Report Implicitly Endorse the ICC? (Updated)
...less able to divest the ICC of jurisdiction over Bashir and the others pursuant to the principle of complementarity: Last year the Sudanese government appointed a special prosecutor Nimr Ibrahim Mohamed to look in the Darfur abuses committed since 2003 and promised to bring Ali Kushayb, an alleged Janjaweed militia leader wanted by the ICC, before court. However, to date Kushayb has not been prosecuted and an attempt by the special prosecutor to probe the governor of South Kordofan Ahmed Haroun, also wanted by the ICC, was blocked by the...07 Jun Speaking at OSISA in Johannesburg
I am currently in Durban, South Africa, co-teaching a fantastic ICL course with my friend (and War and Law blogger) Chris Gevers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban is a very nice city, with amazing coffee — high praise from someone who lives in Melbourne. I will be spending three days in Cape Town next week, then two days in Johannesburg. On June 13, I’ll be giving a lunchtime lecture at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa on Libya’s failed complementarity challenge; any Opinio Juris readers in Johannesburg/Pretoria are...
30 Dec Honoring the Life and Legacy of Megan Fairlie
...Institute in which she inspired students that they, too, could pursue their passion. Her 2017 lecture, to a packed hall, addressed comparative criminal procedure in mass atrocity trials. Megan was a prolific scholar, having authored scores of law review articles and book chapters. Her main research area was international criminal procedure, particularly questions arising during proceedings before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court (“ICC”). See full CV here. Megan’s scholarship touched many themes – complementarity, procedure, and judging. One thread that pervaded her...07 Aug Guest Post: More on Morsi’s Shadow on Palestine’s ICC Efforts
...are not ICC members, and its unlikely the international community would seriously sanction Hamas for failure to cooperate. (It also reflects a poor comprehension of complementarity, which would leave the Palestinians much more open to charges given that they have never investigated, let alone prosecuted, their own war crimes). The Palestinians openly seek to use ICC investigations for diplomatic leverage: “Diplomats say they expect the Palestinian plan to join the ICC and set a war crimes investigation in motion to be one of the bargaining chips on the table in...22 Dec Scott Horton’s Odd Comment About the ICC
...the Court in such a situation. On the contrary, they would almost certainly rely on the principle of complementarity (Article 17 of the Rome Statute) and prosecute the perpetrators themselves, divesting the Court of jurisdiction. And that would be a very good thing: as Moreno-Ocampo pointed out when he was sworn in as the ICC’s prosecutor, “the absence of trials before this Court, as a consequence of the regular functioning of national institutions, would be a major success.” And therein lies the fundamental problem with Scott’s comment. The great powers...
30 Sep The ICC between Delegation Theory and Community Functions: Perils and Opportunities
...functioning of the Court do not rest on a delegation of powers by national states but on the fulfilment of a jus puniendi function at the international level. Importantly, within the ICC system informed by the principle of complementarity, such function shall not be read as securing a ‘primary right’ to punish to states, but as making clear that it is their ‘primary responsibility’ to make ‘sovereignty answerable’ (Stahn, p.447). This is fully in line with public law conceptions of the modern state where sovereignty understood as a ‘system of...
01 Aug Options for a Peace Settlement for Ukraine: Option Paper XII – A Dynamic Political Settlement: Adapting to the Evolving Post-agreement Context
...never implemented. Moreover, inclusion of actors from these Oblasts ought to extend to actors that favour unity and represent minorities, including Russian-speaking groups opposed to Russia’s role in the conflict or to regional autonomy. Subnational governance arrangements in Ukraine ought to centre around strong decentralization at the municipal level—in complementarity to a ‘weaker’ asymmetrical arrangement at the regional level—to avoid further deepening divisions along regional lines, which would render any future unity-building more challenging and instead encourage other regions to demand similar levels of self-governance. Moreover, this approach would increase...