Search: Complementarity SAIF GADDAFI

...of the Court”; (3) admissibility, which focuses on gravity and complementarity; and (4) interests of justice, whether the OTP should decline to proceed despite jurisdiction and admissibility. The OTP opened its investigation into the situation in Afghanistan in January 2007. Yet only now — nearly seven years later — has the OTP concluded that there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes were committed there. And what are those crimes? Here is a snippet from the report: 23. Killings: According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (“UNAMA”),...

...ILC’s work as duplicative and redundant as crimes against humanity is already within the mandate of the ICC. Malaysia based its argument on the understanding that the member States of the Rome Statute have an obligation to domesticate the crimes in their jurisdictions in furtherance of the complementarity principle. Further, the replication of the definition of CAH from the Rome Statute to the Draft Articles was flagged as problematic. (pp. 43 – 44, 129, 2016 Verbatim Record) China questioned the relevance and need for a specialised convention and called out...

...if it attributes al-Senussi’s lack of counsel to the “security situation,” therefore, PTC I has absolutely no reason to accept Libya’s assertions that it will be able to provide al-Senussi with counsel prior to trial. And that, of course, is the problem with PTC I’s new “at the time of the admissibility decision” test for complementarity, which I criticized in my previous post. Al-Senussi’s lack of counsel may not threaten his prosecution right now — but it eventually will. And that is true regardless of whether al-Senussi’s lack of counsel...

...states: “ICC rules prohibit it from prosecuting cases against a country that has a robust judicial system willing and able to prosecute war crimes of its personnel. Therefore, the ICC’s mandate should not supersede Israel’s robust judicial system, including its military justice system.” (emphasis added). The House letter contains similar language claiming that Israel and the US “are both able and willing to carry out investigations and prosecute offenders.” These assertions misstate the Rome Statute’s “complementarity” regime. The ICC does not cede jurisdiction simply because a country “has a robust...

...principle of complementarity by disregarding Kenya’s own national investigations. This legal critique of  violating the principle of non-intervention helped fuel broader political opposition, with the ICC increasingly depicted as an instrument of Western intervention disproportionately targeting African states. While a motion for mass withdrawal from the Rome Statute ultimately failed within the African Union, the populist reframing of the issue garnered significant domestic support. Formalist legal grievances, therefore, often drive and sustain populist resistance to international courts. For example, the European Court of Human Rights has been criticized for overfitting...

...in the title of this piece. Indeed, it concerns the ICC complementarity principle which entails that states have priority in proceeding with cases within their jurisdiction, and a case is only admissible if a state is unwilling or unable to investigate crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court. By analogy, if the international community as a whole is unable (due to the US veto) or unwilling (considering the blatant double-standard positions of Western States) to hold Israel to account for its ongoing CAH, where can the Palestinians recourse to seek...

...country and ask for the substitute protection of another state.” It has become “a remedial or palliative branch of human rights law.” This integrated approach is not confined to human rights. It is grounded in the principle of systemic integration under Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties and the complementarity model as an alternative to lex specialis. From this stance, the 1951 Convention is not a self-contained instrument; it is a constitutional node in the architecture of public international law.  Virtually every branch of the...

...reference to the work of other colleagues. But it is not difficult to think of other areas of application. Do international and domestic courts, when faced with competing jurisdiction, consider their authority as an endowment? How could this bear on the positive/negative construction of complementarity in the International Criminal Court? Following on the discussion of proportionality – how do decision-makers consider similar concepts under human rights law – e.g., if an offsetting consideration is phrased as a derogation, a limitation or in terms of proportionality? Does the availability bias skew...

...example by the US State Department, Human Rights Watch, and the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya. It remains to be seen if these investigative efforts will lead to concrete charges in the form of an arrest warrant. Yet, trafficking in persons may be more readily prosecuted as an international crime domestically, in states that have the legal machinery to do so. One such state is Uganda – a state that has been to the forefront of complementarity initiatives. It has domesticated the Rome Statute and created a specialized International...

...her dissenting opinion yesterday. She thought that too much weight was placed on expeditiousness of the proceedings to the expense of Kenya’s sovereign rights and principle of complementarity. She said despite Kenya’s plea for a few months to show additional proof of ongoing investigations, the pre-trial chamber judges led by Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova overlooked these and went on to issue a final decision on the matter within eight weeks of the filing. She said Ekaterina‘s assertions that the proceedings needed to go ahead quickly were misplaced as suspects were neither...

...itself from ICC scrutiny by invoking complementarity and other arguments, it will relinquish a tool that has already proven invaluable in the face of atrocity situations where there are few other options. The plight of the Rohingya, which Ambassador Nikki Haley has championed within the Security Council, offers a prime example of the utility of the ICC to U.S. foreign policy priorities in the human rights context. Haley has called the Myanmar government’s denials of the abuses “preposterous” and demanded that the government investigate abuses and allow humanitarian actors better...

...in the foot (IHL version). We had two guest contributions in the last two weeks. The first, from Rick Lines, Damon Barrett and Patrick Gallahue was entitled: The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: ‘Asian Values’ or Drug Treaty Influence? Marina Aksenova posted on Five Questions on the Colombian Sentencing Practice and the Principle of Complementarity under the Rome Statute. Finally, I wrapped up the news and posted on the events and announcements. Thanks to our guest contributors and to you for following us on Opinio Juris. Have a great weekend!...