Our purpose: Promoting peace through criminal justice – preventing crimes of aggression
Through the United Nations Charter, States have expressed their commitment “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. They have agreed to renounce the illegal threat or use of force, and to settle their disputes “by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered”. States have the legal duty to abide by this commitment and the UN Security Council has the primary responsibility to enforce it.The Nuremberg Trials made it clear that criminal justice also has an important role to play for the promotion of peace and the deterrence of acts of aggression – though it remained limited and theoretical for many decades thereafter. With the 2010 Kampala amendments to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, States Parties created a new mechanism to enforce the most important rule of international law: the prohibition of the illegal use of force under the United Nations Charter. This website is dedicated to making accountability a reality.
News
Huffington Post article about aggression: Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, Co-founder, Global Brief, and Head of the Counsel Assistance Unit of the ICC, writes that “It has cost humanity rivers of blood, destruction of Biblical proportions, untold suffering and irreparable losses of peoples — in whole or in part — over millennia to finally recognize in the 20th century that war of aggression constitutes in Robert H. Jackson’s eloquent words, the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Look up, what Shoamanesh writes about the Kampala review conference, the amendments and why the time to act is now.
Samoa ratifies crime of aggression amendments: On 25 September 2012, Samoa deposited its instrument of ratification of the Kampala amendments with the Office of Legal Affairs at the United Nations. It is the second country to ratify them. 28 are still needed for activation of the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. The Prime Minister assures that “Samoa is not a member of any military grouping and has no aspirations to become one. We do so because we place great faith in the rule of law and the vital protection that the law offers to all States, especially to the weak and small. From this perspective, we consider the International Criminal Court one of the most important developments in the affairs of the international community in the struggle against impunity ….”
Photo: Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, deposits ratification bill with United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Patricia O’Brien.
15 States report on progress in ratification process: At a side event to the high-level meeting on the rule of law on 24 September 2012, hosted by Liechtenstein Foreign Minister Aurelia Frick and featuring Nuremberg Prosecutor Ben Ferencz, 15 ICC States Parties reported about their progress in ratifying. See the meeting summary here.