International Criminal Court

International Criminal Court

Allegations of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity have

undoubtedly received unprecedented press coverage in recent years –

more than at any time since Nuremberg. This is not because the

incidences of such barbarities have increased, but

simply because those crimes are brought to us more rapidly these days

by the electronic media. Since the early 1990’s the international

community has witnessed of a variety of criminal tribunals that were

meant to promote peace-making and political transition in situations

of gross violations of human rights and armed conflict among ethnical

or religious groups. This tendency led to the establishment by the UN

of two ad hoc Tribunals-for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda-and

of the International Criminal Court (ICC). There was also a

proliferation of 'mixed' judicial bodies-in Cambodia, Sierra Leone,

Kosovo and East Timor-composed of both national and international

judges and enforcing domestic as well as international criminal law.

It is perhaps most cynical to assert that transitional societies,

convalescing from conflict or moving from oppression towards

democracy, have developed a variety of ways of dealing with past war

crimes and human rights abuses. Irrefutably they have united the

short-term and long-term goals of ending the conflict and preventing

its recurrence, and achieving social stability and reconciliation.

Almost a century after the idea for such a body had first been mooted,

on 17 July 1998, to the acclaim of many; a permanent International

Criminal Court (ICC) was born at last in Rome. The adoption on that

day of the Court's Statute...

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...rnatives to prosecution it

is difficult to express a preference among them, other than the vague

notion that "perhaps the challenge is to meet a basic need for balance

and wholeness." Neither the "one size fits all" prosecutorial

strategy, nor a uniform preference for amnesty or some non-juridical

alternative in every case, would be justifiable. Circumstances differ,

and circumstances matter. Atrocities, whether committed abroad or at

home, are almost by definition highly unusual. For precisely that

reason, their resolutions should be too.

Ironically, perhaps, a court that is very similar to these from a

legal point of view is likely to soon be established in Iraq.

You make some good and thought-provoking points, but your language is

not always as clear as it might be. Clarity is of supreme importance

in law!