The history of the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) spans over more than a century. The “road to Rome” was a long and often contentious one. While efforts to create a global criminal court can be traced back to the early 19th century, the story began in earnest in 1872 with Gustav Moynier – one of the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross – who proposed a permanent court in response to the crimes of the Franco-Prussian War. The next serious call for an internationalized system of justice came from the drafters of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, who envisaged an ad hoc international court to try the Kaiser and German war criminals of World War I. Following World War II, the Allies set up the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals to try Axis war criminals.
In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly (UN GA) adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in which it called for criminals to be tried “by such international penal tribunals as may have jurisdiction” and invited the International Law Commission (ILC) “to study the desirability and possibility of establishing an international judicial organ for the trials of persons charged with genocide.” While the ILC drafted such a statute in the early 1950s, the Cold War stymied these efforts and the General Assembly effectively abandoned the effort pending agreement on a definition for the crime of aggression and an international Code of Crimes.
In June 1989, motivated in part by an effort to combat drug trafficking, Trinidad and Tobago resurrected a pre-existing proposal for the establishment of an ICC and the UN GA asked that the ILC resume its work on drafting a statute. The conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia as well as in Rwanda in the early 1990s and the mass commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide led the UN Security Council to establish two separate temporary ad hoc tribunals to hold individuals accountable for these atrocities, further highlighting the need for a permanent international criminal court.
In 1994, the ILC presented its final draft statute for an ICC to the UN GA and recommended that a conference of plenipotentiaries be convened to negotiate a treaty and enact the Statute. To consider major substantive issues in the draft statute, the General Assembly established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, which met twice in 1995.
After considering the Committee’s report, the UN GA created the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of the ICC to prepare a consolidated draft text. From 1996 to 1998, six sessions of the UN Preparatory Committee were held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in which NGOs provided input into the discussions and attended meetings under the umbrella of the NGO Coalition for an ICC (CICC). In January 1998, the Bureau and coordinators of the Preparatory Committee convened for an Inter-Sessional meeting in Zutphen, the Netherlands to technically consolidate and restructure the draft articles into a draft.
Based on the Preparatory Committee’s draft, the UNGA decided to convene the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an ICC at its fifty-second session to “finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment” of an ICC. The “Rome Conference” took place from 15 June to 17 July 1998 in Rome, Italy, with 160 countries participating in the negotiations and the NGO Coalition closely monitoring these discussions, distributing information worldwide on developments, and facilitating the participation and parallel activities of more than 200 NGOs. At the end of five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 nations voted in favor of the adoption of the Rome Statute of the ICC, with seven nations voting against the treaty (including the United States, Israel, China, Iraq and Qatar) and 21 states abstaining.
The Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) was charged with completing the establishment and smooth functioning of the Court by negotiating complementary documents, including the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, the Elements of Crimes, the Relationship Agreement between the Court and the United Nations, the Financial Regulations, the Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the Court.
On 11 April 2002, the 60th ratification necessary to trigger the entry into force of the Rome Statute was deposited by several states in conjunction. The treaty entered into force on 1 July 2002.
FUNCTIONS
The international criminal court has quite a number of functions that are as listed below;
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression (although it cannot currently exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression)
another function of this court is to push an agenda based on what they believe is right and wrong. These type of court don't go after individual countries, but instead go after individual people. So for example if a soldier is ordered to protect a specific group of people and in the process of doing so he kills a person form the opposing group and the court takes the side of the opposing group then the soldier stands a good chance of facing international criminal charges.
HISTORY OF THE ICJ
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main judicial tribunal of the united nations, to which all member states are parties. It is often informally referred to as the World Court. The ICJ was established in 1945 by the United Nations (Statute of the International Court of Justice [ICJ Statute], June 26, 1945, 59 Stat. 1055, 3 Bevans 1179), the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. It replaced the former Permanent Court of International Justice, which had operated within The Hague, Netherlands, since 1922. Like its predecessor, the headquarters of the ICJ is also located in the Peace Palace at The Hague.
ACTIVITIES, COMPOSITION & FUNCTION
Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the Court.[2]
The Court's workload covers a wide range of judicial activity. To date, the ICJ has dealt with relatively few cases. However, since the 1980s there has been a clear increase in willingness to use the Court, especially among developing countries. After the court ruled that the U.S.'s covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law (Nicaragua v. United States), the United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986. The United States accepts the court's jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis.[3] Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings. However, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case.
The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of persons nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ statute. Elections are staggered with five judges elected every three years, in order to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term. No two may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the Court is supposed to represent the "main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world". Essentially, this has meant common law, civil law and socialist law (now post-communist law).
There is an informal understanding that the seats of the Court will be distributed so that there are: five seats for Western countries, three for Afric an states (including one judge of francophonic civil law, one of anglophonic common law and one Arab), two for Eastern European states, and two for Latin American and Caribbean states.[4] The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States) always have a judge on the Court, thereby occupying three of the Western seats, one of the Asian seats and one of the Eastern European seats. The exception was China, which did not have a judge on the Court from 1967 to 1985, because it did not put forward a candidate.
Article 6 of the Statute provides that all judges should be "elected regardless of their nationality among persons of high moral character", who are either qualified for the highest judicial office in their home states or known as lawyers with sufficient competence in international law. Judicial independence is dealt with specifically in Articles 16–18. Judges of the ICJ are not able to hold any other post, nor act as counsel. In practice the Members of the Court have their own interpretation of these rules. This allows them to be involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest. A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of other members of the Court.[5] Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua Case, the USA issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the Court because of the presence of judges from Eastern bloc states.[6]
Judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Decisions and Advisory Opinions are by majority and, in the event of an equal division, the President's vote becomes decisive.[7] Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions.
The Court has two major functions:
To settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted by States, and
To give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies.
In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly (UN GA) adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in which it called for criminals to be tried “by such international penal tribunals as may have jurisdiction” and invited the International Law Commission (ILC) “to study the desirability and possibility of establishing an international judicial organ for the trials of persons charged with genocide.” While the ILC drafted such a statute in the early 1950s, the Cold War stymied these efforts and the General Assembly effectively abandoned the effort pending agreement on a definition for the crime of aggression and an international Code of Crimes.
In June 1989, motivated in part by an effort to combat drug trafficking, Trinidad and Tobago resurrected a pre-existing proposal for the establishment of an ICC and the UN GA asked that the ILC resume its work on drafting a statute. The conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia as well as in Rwanda in the early 1990s and the mass commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide led the UN Security Council to establish two separate temporary ad hoc tribunals to hold individuals accountable for these atrocities, further highlighting the need for a permanent international criminal court.
In 1994, the ILC presented its final draft statute for an ICC to the UN GA and recommended that a conference of plenipotentiaries be convened to negotiate a treaty and enact the Statute. To consider major substantive issues in the draft statute, the General Assembly established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, which met twice in 1995.
After considering the Committee’s report, the UN GA created the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of the ICC to prepare a consolidated draft text. From 1996 to 1998, six sessions of the UN Preparatory Committee were held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in which NGOs provided input into the discussions and attended meetings under the umbrella of the NGO Coalition for an ICC (CICC). In January 1998, the Bureau and coordinators of the Preparatory Committee convened for an Inter-Sessional meeting in Zutphen, the Netherlands to technically consolidate and restructure the draft articles into a draft.
Based on the Preparatory Committee’s draft, the UNGA decided to convene the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an ICC at its fifty-second session to “finalize and adopt a convention on the establishment” of an ICC. The “Rome Conference” took place from 15 June to 17 July 1998 in Rome, Italy, with 160 countries participating in the negotiations and the NGO Coalition closely monitoring these discussions, distributing information worldwide on developments, and facilitating the participation and parallel activities of more than 200 NGOs. At the end of five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 nations voted in favor of the adoption of the Rome Statute of the ICC, with seven nations voting against the treaty (including the United States, Israel, China, Iraq and Qatar) and 21 states abstaining.
The Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) was charged with completing the establishment and smooth functioning of the Court by negotiating complementary documents, including the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, the Elements of Crimes, the Relationship Agreement between the Court and the United Nations, the Financial Regulations, the Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the Court.
On 11 April 2002, the 60th ratification necessary to trigger the entry into force of the Rome Statute was deposited by several states in conjunction. The treaty entered into force on 1 July 2002.
FUNCTIONS
The international criminal court has quite a number of functions that are as listed below;
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression (although it cannot currently exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression)
another function of this court is to push an agenda based on what they believe is right and wrong. These type of court don't go after individual countries, but instead go after individual people. So for example if a soldier is ordered to protect a specific group of people and in the process of doing so he kills a person form the opposing group and the court takes the side of the opposing group then the soldier stands a good chance of facing international criminal charges.
HISTORY OF THE ICJ
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main judicial tribunal of the united nations, to which all member states are parties. It is often informally referred to as the World Court. The ICJ was established in 1945 by the United Nations (Statute of the International Court of Justice [ICJ Statute], June 26, 1945, 59 Stat. 1055, 3 Bevans 1179), the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. It replaced the former Permanent Court of International Justice, which had operated within The Hague, Netherlands, since 1922. Like its predecessor, the headquarters of the ICJ is also located in the Peace Palace at The Hague.
ACTIVITIES, COMPOSITION & FUNCTION
Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in 1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice, similar to that of its predecessor, is the main constitutional document constituting and regulating the Court.[2]
The Court's workload covers a wide range of judicial activity. To date, the ICJ has dealt with relatively few cases. However, since the 1980s there has been a clear increase in willingness to use the Court, especially among developing countries. After the court ruled that the U.S.'s covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law (Nicaragua v. United States), the United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986. The United States accepts the court's jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis.[3] Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings. However, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case.
The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of persons nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ statute. Elections are staggered with five judges elected every three years, in order to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term. No two may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the Court is supposed to represent the "main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world". Essentially, this has meant common law, civil law and socialist law (now post-communist law).
There is an informal understanding that the seats of the Court will be distributed so that there are: five seats for Western countries, three for Afric an states (including one judge of francophonic civil law, one of anglophonic common law and one Arab), two for Eastern European states, and two for Latin American and Caribbean states.[4] The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States) always have a judge on the Court, thereby occupying three of the Western seats, one of the Asian seats and one of the Eastern European seats. The exception was China, which did not have a judge on the Court from 1967 to 1985, because it did not put forward a candidate.
Article 6 of the Statute provides that all judges should be "elected regardless of their nationality among persons of high moral character", who are either qualified for the highest judicial office in their home states or known as lawyers with sufficient competence in international law. Judicial independence is dealt with specifically in Articles 16–18. Judges of the ICJ are not able to hold any other post, nor act as counsel. In practice the Members of the Court have their own interpretation of these rules. This allows them to be involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest. A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of other members of the Court.[5] Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua Case, the USA issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the Court because of the presence of judges from Eastern bloc states.[6]
Judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Decisions and Advisory Opinions are by majority and, in the event of an equal division, the President's vote becomes decisive.[7] Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions.
The Court has two major functions:
To settle, in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted by States, and
To give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies.
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