On January 9, Command Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, posted a rather incendiary statement on Facebook about the future of ISIS: ISIS needs to understand that the Joint Force is on orders to annihilate them. So, they have two options should they decide to come up against the United States, our...
Although aggression received most of the attention at the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) last month, the ASP also adopted a series of amendments to Art. 8 of the Rome Statute, the war-crimes provision, prohibiting the use of three kinds of weapons in both international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC): [W]eapons, which use microbial or other biological agents, or...
[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Professor, The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS and Chair of the International Criminal Court Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association] On Thursday, December 14, 2017, the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties (ASP) took the historic and significant decision, by consensus, to activate, effective July 17, 2018, the ICC’s jurisdiction over its 4th crime,...
A friend who is even more jaded than I called my attention to the following curious paragraph in the Draft Resolution the ASP has just adopted by consensus: 3. Reaffirms paragraph 1 of article 40 and paragraph 1 of article 119 of the Rome Statute in relation to the judicial independence of the judges of the Court. This paragraph is new --...
It went down to the wire, but it's over. States reached consensus on adopting the aggression amendments -- after those in the opt-out camp gave in to the opt-in camp. The adopted Draft Resolution provides the following: Confirms that...
[Gregory Gordon is Associate Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong] I’m here on the ground in New York and I want to provide an additional perspective on Kevin’s post. First, the document he has posted is strictly a transitory draft meant only to facilitate discussion. In no way does it necessarily represent any hardened position of the...
A new document is being circulated at the Assembly of States Parties entitled "Draft Resolution: Activation of the jurisdiction of the Court over the crime of aggression." Operative Provision 1(b) seems to indicate that the opt-out camp, led by Liechtenstein, has conceded the jurisdictional point to the opt-in camp, led by Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Here is the text of OP1(b): (b) ...
The US submission to the ASP has finally appeared. It is not very long -- about 1.5 pages -- but manages to pack in a good number of false claims and bizarre interpretations of the Rome Statute. In terms of falsity, the US repeats its longstanding claim that the Court has no jurisdiction over the nationals of non-state parties, even when those...
Although many important issues will be discussed this week at the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), none will be quite so momentous as the decision to activate the ICC's jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the definition of aggression, there is no question that the activation of jurisdiction will represent the culmination of...
A couple of days ago, the OTP finally announced what we all expected: that it would not reconsider its refusal to open a formal investigation into Israel's attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. Dov Jacobs has already offered some thoughts on the lengthy document the OTP has filed with the Court explaining its reasoning -- what the OTP nicely calls...
I am proud of many of my former students, but the one I am most proud of is Golriz Ghahraman, who took my international criminal law course many years ago at the University of Auckland and is still a dear friend. In the years since my course, Golriz has worked on the Karadzic case, earned an MSt in human rights from Oxford,...
[Jennifer Trahan is an Associate Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University.] As Jens Ohlin has written, a highly awaited verdict came out Wednesday, November 22, sentencing Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Main Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), to life in prison for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed from 1992-1995. The...
