Mitigating Backlash and Promoting Cooperation: The ICC beyond the Courtroom

• In Event: Human Rights Promotion and Protection on the Global Stage

Abstract

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regularly
engages in outreach with states and communities and positions this work as central to its
mission to promote accountability norms and end impunity. In this paper, we ask if and
how the OTP uses its outreach and educational activities to advance its efforts in the
courtroom. Drawing on a broader literature on international organizations’ engagement
with domestic constituencies, we hypothesize that the OTP uses its outreach and educational
work to build support among domestic publics in response to state backlash against the ICC
and in advance of the OTP’s requests for cooperation on issues such as access to evidence,
and witness testimony. To test these hypotheses, we use the “Beyond the Courtroom”
dataset, which documents over 1000 discrete OTP activities. This paper advances the
international relations and international law literatures by theorizing about the ICC as an
international organization as well as an international court, and by providing generalizable
hypotheses about the impact of the Court’s quasi- and non-judicial work on its overall
efficacy and ability to hold perpetrators to account.

Authors

• Brian D. Greenhill, SUNY, University at Albany

• Courtney Hillebrecht, University of Nebraska, Lincoln