The ICC was founded after a 1998 conference attended by 160 nations in Rome. An agreement known as the Rome Statute, which took effect in July 2002, established the ICC as the first treaty-based international criminal court able to investigate and try individuals-both governmental and non-state actors-accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
The court, housed in a modern steel-and-glass office building, consists of eighteen judges elected by its Assembly of State Parties. It also employs a full-time independent prosecutor.
The Rome Statute authorizes the court to impose heavy jail sentences, up to life imprisonment, on those found guilty. According to its website, the court has opened thirty cases since its inception, with some cases having more than one suspect. To date, there have been ten convictions.
Some 123 countries have signed the Rome Statute, but both the United States and Russia are scofflaws. The United States signed the statute in 2000 but withdrew from it in 2002 over fears that the court would one day charge U.S. soldiers or officials with international crimes.
Russia withdrew in 2016 after the court issued preliminary findings classifying Russia's annexation of Crimea and hostilities in the Donbas region as international conflicts warranting further investigation.
The International Criminal Court has been criticized for targeting African human rights violators and overlooking European and U.S. malefactors. But in a historic turnabout, the court opened investigations in 2020 into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Palestine. The Trump Administration responded by revoking the visas of the court's lead and assistant prosecutors and freezing their U.S. assets. The Biden Administration lifted these sanctions, but continues to oppose both probes.
The ICC promises to be even more aggressive on Ukraine under the leadership of its new chief prosecutor Karim Khan, a London-based barrister, who took office last year. Khan opened the ICC's Ukraine investigation on March 2 after receiving requests from thirty-nine state parties to the Rome statute, an unprecedented number. Since then, he has personally visited both Poland and Ukraine to begin the arduous process of gathering evidence of war crimes.
Though Ukraine has never joined the court, it has formally accepted the ICC's jurisdiction. Russia has not.
With or without Russia's cooperation or membership in the ICC, the investigation will proceed. Under the Rome Statute, nationals of non-member states can be held responsible for war crimes. Soldiers on the ground, their commanding officers, and those who give the orders at the highest levels are all at risk.
What this means for Putin and his cronies is that, if indicted, they will be subject to arrest if they are apprehended in the territory of a cooperating member state.
What this means for the rest of the world, including the United States, is a reminder that no individual, and no nation, is above the law. The law has a long memory-especially when it comes to war crimes.
War Crimes Humanitarian Crisis International Relations NATO Foreign Policy Militarism Russia Violence Bill Blum Human Rights The Latest Military Vladimir Putin United Nations Ukraine Anti-War Biden Volodymyr Zelenskyy Joe Biden Dispatches Courts United States Genocide
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