Cooperation And The International Criminal Court

In Cooperation and the International Criminal Court: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, Olympia Bekou and Daley J. Birkett bring together expert contributions from both academia and practice, providing detailed insight into the cooperation regime of the International Criminal Court.

This book analyzes patterns and causes of state cooperation with the International Criminal Court. The work focuses on several African cases, including those against leading state officials, to dive into current debates about compliance with international law and resistance to international courts. The book, which draws on interview data collected in The Hague, Kenya, and South Africa, reveals the diversity of state behaviors ranging from full compliance and diplomatic support to partial compliance to resistance and exit. This redirects the widespread narrative about African resistance against the ICC to include evidence of continued Court support. It is argued that the degree of cooperation the Court receives is affected by a government’s perceived costs and benefits of executing an ICC request: a cooperation request is considered high cost or low cost depending on the suspect’s position, the type of action requested, and the government’s domestic and regional policy objectives. In response, the Court has been careful not to alienate states further, thus highlighting that the Court is both above and below the state: having the power to charge individuals including state officials, but relying on governments—sometimes those from which suspects come—to take action on behalf of the Court against the same suspects. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of international law, human rights, international criminal justice, and international relations.

This book provides an analysis of whether the International Criminal Court can be regarded as an International Criminal World Court, capable of exercising its jurisdiction upon every individual despite the fact that not every State is a Party to the Rome Statute. The analysis is based on a twin-pillar system, which consists of a judicial and an enforcement pillar. The judicial pillar is based on the most disputed articles of the Rome Statute; its goal is to determine the potential scope of the Court’s strength through the application of its jurisdiction regime. The enforcement pillar provides an analysis of the cooperation and judicial assistance mechanism pursuant to the Rome Statute’s provisions and its practical implementation through States’ practices. The results of the analysis, and the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism, demonstrate that the ICC cannot in fact be considered a criminal world court. In conclusion, possible solutions are presented in order to improve the enforcement pillar of the Court so that the tremendous strength of the ICC’s judicial pillar, and with it, the exercise of worldwide jurisdiction, can be effectively implemented.

The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 represented an important step in the international effort to repress genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. As there has been enormous scholarly discussion of the ICC, it is difficult and time-consuming to obtain the best writing on the subject. This volume collects the foremost analyses of each part of the ICC to form a convenient reference tool for all those wishing to understand perhaps the most important legal development of the past two decades.

Today's international war crimes tribunals lack police powers, and therefore must prod and persuade defiant states to co-operate in the arrest and prosecution of their own political and military leaders. Victor Peskin's comparative study traces the development of the capacity to build the political authority necessary to exact compliance from states implicated in war crimes and genocide in the cases of the International War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Drawing on 300 in-depth interviews with tribunal officials, Balkan and Rwandan politicians, and Western diplomats, Peskin uncovers the politicized, protracted, and largely behind-the-scenes tribunal-state struggle over co-operation.

The book deals with the controversial relationship between African states, represented by the African Union, and the International Criminal Court. This relationship started promisingly but has been in crisis in recent years. The overarching aim of the book is to analyze and discuss the achievements and shortcomings of interventions in Africa by the International Criminal Court as well as to develop proposals for cooperation between international courts, domestic courts outside Africa and courts within Africa. For this purpose, the book compiles contributions by practitioners of the International Criminal Court and by role players of the judiciary of African countries as well as by academic experts.

The International Criminal Court has ushered in a new era in the protection of human rights. Protecting against genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the Court acts when national justice systems are unwilling or unable to do so. Written by the leading expert in the field, the fourth edition of this seminal text considers the Court in action: its initial rulings, cases it has prosecuted and cases where it has decided not to proceed, such as Iraq. It also examines the results of the Review Conference, by which the crime of aggression was added to the jurisdiction of the Court and addresses the political context, such as the warming of the United States to the Court and the increasing recognition of the inevitability of the institution.

While the ICC can be said to contribute to criminal justice in Africa, it cannot be denied that the relationship between the Court and the continent has been troublesome. The ICC has been accused of targeting Africa, and many African states do not seem willing to cooperate with the Court. Debates on Africa and international criminal justice are increasingly politicised.