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The International Criminal Court (ICC), governed by the Rome Statute was established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
The ICC is an independent international organisation, and is not part of the United Nations system. Its seat is at The Hague in the Netherlands. Although the Court’s expenses are funded primarily by States Parties, it also receives voluntary contributions from governments, international organisations, individuals, corporations and other entities.
On 17 July 1998, the international community reached an historic milestone when 120 States adopted the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing the permanent International Criminal Court.
The principle of complementarity in practice
1. Complementarity: The principle of complementarity governs the exercise of the Court’s jurisdiction. This distinguishes the Court in several significant ways from other known institutions, including the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (the ICTY and the ICTR). The Statute recognizes that States have the first responsibility and right to prosecute international crimes. The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out proceedings.
The principle of complementarity is based both on respect for the primary jurisdiction of States and on considerations of efficiency and effectiveness, since States will generally have the best access to evidence and witnesses and the resources
to carry out proceedings. Moreover, there are limits on the number of prosecutions
the ICC, a single institution, can feasibly conduct.
2. Objectives: The statement above conveys a fundamental element of the philosophy and aspiration underlying the complementarity principle. The establishment of an international order wherein national institutions respond effectively to international crimes, thereby obviating the need for trials before the ICC, would indeed be a major success for the Court and the international community as a whole. Of course, it is expected that, in practice, trials before the ICC will remain very important. The sad reality is that national institutions have all too frequently proven unable or unwilling to address international crimes. The statement nonetheless usefully highlights that the Prosecutor’s objective is not to “compete” with States for jurisdiction, but to help ensure that the most serious international crimes do not go unpunished and thereby to put an end to impunity. The complementarity regime serves as a mechanism to encourage and facilitate the compliance of States with their primary responsibility to investigate and prosecute core crimes.
Where States fail to genuinely carry out proceedings, the Prosecutor must be ready to move decisively with ICC proceedings. Such proceedings will provide independent and impartial justice, demonstrate the determination of the international community to repress international crimes, and demonstrate the real prospect of ICC action, thus encouraging prosecution by States in the future. Click here for the original article
