ICC Operations in Asia and South America: Images of the Issue

• In Event: Roundtable: The Development of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: The Politics of Criminalization of Some Heads of State Around the World

Abstract

The international community intended to use the development of the Rome State of the International Criminal Court to bring to justice those accused of the most outrageous crimes against human rights and humanitarian law in proceedings that guarantee all recognized safeguards for fair trial; to hold individuals and groups personally responsible for planning, ordering or committing gross crimes under international law; to prosecute those responsible for crime whether they were committed during war or peace time and regardless of whether the perpetrators were leaders or subordinates, civilians or members of the military, paramilitary or police forces; to complement prosecutions in national courts; and acting when states were unwilling or unable to effectively discharge their principle of domestic jurisdiction.
Be that as it may with the good intentions of the Court, serious and complex issues exist. This paper, therefore, strives to explore the issue of the politics of criminalization of some heads of states in Asia and South Africa by the Court so that deeper insights and lesions can be gleaned from the process.

Author

• Obi N.I. Ebbe, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga