Search: palestine icc
05 Aug Emerging Voices: Configuring Admissibility Challenges in the ICC–Civil Dispute or Part of the Criminal Proceedings?
implications, particularly on issues of burden and standard of proof. The ICC has not produced significant jurisprudence on these issues in its first eleven years of existence. Decisions on issues of complementarity have focused on the technical interpretation of statutory provisions, usually in challenges brought by defendants. To a large extent, this is the result of the prevalence of “self-referrals” in those situations which have been brought to the Court, meaning that the relevant states have not sought challenge the prosecutions brought in the ICC. In the few non-self-referred situations...
02 Jul The Use of Benchmarks in the Colombia Situation: An Opportunity for a Victim-Oriented Approach to ICC Complementarity
...the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC in the context of its ongoing preliminary examination in Colombia. In accordance with the ICC’s complementarity principle, the OTP is closely monitoring whether Colombia’s national efforts towards accountability for crimes potentially falling under ICC jurisdiction are sufficient, or whether they warrant the opening of a formal investigation. Recently, the OTP announced that it will use benchmarks for this determination. This post proposes a central role for victim’s rights and interests in the OTP’s analysis and the conceptualization of said benchmarks. Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for...
17 Aug States of Justice Symposium: Quo Vadis? A Review of Oumar Ba’s ‘States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court’
presumed weak and strong states to the extent that even when the Prosecutor sought to launch the first major investigation that implicates a major world power in Afghanistan, the result has been a strong rebuke from the US government. Even within the weaker states where the ICC has operated in most of its existence, state agents who have been targeted have found it easier to attack the ICC on the basis of perceived bias against weaker states. The pushback has resonated well especially when it is punctuated by sentiments of...
23 Jun The Sentencing of Dominic Ongwen: A Normative Inquiry
these two questions, highlighting important issues with the Court’s reasoning behind its abstention from imposing a life sentence in this case. Through this, it attempts to shed much-needed light on the considerations that underlie the ICC’s sentencing of convicts. Analysing the Sentence The ICC has a difficult role in functioning as a victim-centric Court, while attempting to balance this against the rights of convicts. As the Court noted in Ongwen’s sentencing, while victims should be heard, ‘revenge’ should not guide judicial decision-making. Article 78(1) of the Rome Statute requires it...
26 May Affective Justice Symposium: Politics and Law in Kamari Clarke’s Affective Justice
...apparent than in Clarke’s comparison of the ICC and the African Court. The ICC is not, in Clarke’s account, a-political but it appears to many as a “corruption of justice” (173) because it does not seek to identify and redress the deep conditions of violence in Africa. Indeed the politics of the ICC are politics in the derogatory sense: the ICC represents political interests of the global north, holding African but not European leaders accountable for violence and thereby undermining African political and economic self-determination (170). This is the so-called...12 Oct Peaceful Settlement in Uganda Jeopardized by ICC Arrest Warrants
The story coming out of Uganda bears emphasis for its impact on the ICC doctrine of complementarity. Under Article 17 of the Rome Statute, “the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where … [t]he case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution.” The ICC website indicates that “the International Criminal Court will complement national courts so that they retain jurisdiction to try genocide, crimes against humanity and...
10 Mar The Significance of the ICC Appeals Chamber’s Ruling in the Afghanistan Situation
...obtainable. Such double-standards are anathema to the functioning of a judicial institution. Facing the challenges ahead No one believes the Afghanistan investigation will be easy. It will be complex, remote from The Hague, costly, and could result in adverse political repercussions by those who do not want to see the investigation proceed. The Appeals Chamber, however is sending an important signal that the ICC should not be dissuaded from carrying out its mandate even in such circumstances. The ICC States Parties must now ensure that the Prosecutor has sufficient funding...
29 May Affective Justice Symposium: Other Geographies, Other Pushbacks–Affective Justice as a Diagnosis for International Criminal Law
[Sara Kendall is a Senior Lecturer in International Law at The University of Kent in the Faculty of Law. She is also Co-Director of The Centre for Critical International Law.] In early March 2020, the US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave a press briefing concerning the ICC Appeals Chamber’s decision on Afghanistan. As is widely known by Opinio Juris’s readership, the ICC’s prosecutor aimed to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of Afghanistan as well as other crimes linked to the situation, which could...