The scope and efficacy of the International Criminal Court: A critical analysis of the ICC approach to judicial and cultural competencies

Abstract

(Chapter 1) The International Criminal Court (ICC) was ratified by a coalition of global powers in 1989, and its jurisdiction was later ratified in 2002 by the Rome Statute.3 The lofty vision of the ICC has focussed on a brand of justice that holds those who have committed the worst atrocities known to man accountable for their actions in an imprisonment setting in The Hague, Netherlands.4 This conceptualization of a globalized justice system stems from a collectively held ideology that there is a framework in place for this type of justice; one that is to some extent supposed to be restorative. The ICC champions that it is for the benefit of all nations against the horrors that have been committed in the last century. This thesis aims to look at the intended efficacy of the ICC; how and why nations use the ICC to their advantage; the argument of how the ICC can be used as an extension of the security systems built and funded by the Global North in an act of neo-colonial paternalism; and how the ICC is being used as a modern political tool in the cases that it chooses to prosecute. The ICC will be explored through a critical analysis lens that prioritizes restorative justice mechanisms that are practiced and welcomed, and seen continuously to fruition by those who have directly experienced the violence that the ICC contents to resolve. In so far, the ICC has brought forward seventeen cases to trail, with a now dwindling membership of 123 countries as signatories to the functioning international legal recourse clause that is the Rome Statute.5 As argued by Hillebrecht in Who Pursues the Perpetrators? State Cooperation with the ICC, the scope, mechanisms, and efficacy of this international court is used as that of an “international legal lasso.”6 This means that instead of directly serving the needs, wants, and systems of justice as wanted by the survivors of the most horrific acts known to humankind, the ICC is operating under the disposition, needs, and wants, of western conceptualizations of justice and neo-colonial paternalist practices.7 The following three chapters will appear in this order: Theoretical Approaches to International Justice; Mechanisms and Critical Analysis of the ICC; Case Studies - Uganda and Sudan. Theoretical Approaches to International Justice provides a foundational understanding of a series of political, judicial, and socio-economic epistemologies grounded in decolonial texts and contexts. This will allow the reader to have an solid understanding of the critiques that will be used throughout the thesis to demonstrate where the ICC, as an institution that aims to restore justice and peace, fails to do either. Mechanisms and Critical Analysis of the ICC will be an exploration, as stated directly in the title takes the critiques of the international judicial system as it stands currently, and applies this to the function and judicial mechanisms of the ICC as they directly interact with the global stage. Through this chapter, there will be an exploration into the conceptualization of the Court and the Rome Statute along with an analysis of the relationship, or rather, lack thereof, between the International Criminal Court and the United States of America. Finally, the analysis will demonstrate the critiques of the ICC through an analysis of two cases called to the court, Uganda and Sudan, by analysing them through the methodologies and concepts discussed in the previous two chapters along with a summarizing paragraph in order to solidify a grounded understanding of the critiques and analysis presented on the scope and efficacy of the International Criminal Court.