The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The ICC is distinct from the International Court of Justice, an organ of the United Nations that hears disputes between states. Established in 2002 pursuant to the multilateral Rome Statute, the ICC is considered by its proponents to be a major step toward justice, and an innovation in international law and human rights.
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to prosecute individuals for serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, regardless of where the crime was committed and irrespective of the accused's nationality or residence. Rooted in the belief that certain offenses are universally morally reprehensible and that they threaten the international community as a whole, universal jurisdiction holds that such acts are beyond the scope of any single nation's laws. Instead, these crimes are considered to violate norms owed to the global community and fundamental principles of international law, making them prosecutable in any court that invokes this principle.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome, Italy on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of January 2025, 125 states are party to the statute. Among other things, it establishes court function, jurisdiction and structure.
International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
Andrew Thomas Cayley,, is a King's Counsel and was His Majesty's Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2021 until February 2024. He was appointed by the Attorney General of England and Wales, Suella Braverman MP, KC on 19 January 2021. He is now a Principal Trial Lawyer at the ICC.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
Christine, Baroness Van den Wyngaert is a Belgian jurist and judge. She served as international and comparative criminal law expert from 2009 to 2018 as a judge on the International Criminal Court. She served in the Trial Division Chamber. On 8 July 2013, Van den Wyngaert was ennobled by King Albert II of Belgium as a baroness for her services as a judge. From 2003 to 2005 she was a Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and from 2000 to 2002 an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice.
Karim Asad Ahmad Khan is a British lawyer specialising in international criminal law and international human rights law, who has served as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court since 2021.
Robert Petit is a Canadian lawyer who during 2006 and 2009 was the International Co-Prosecutor for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which is aiming to try Khmer Rouge leaders for violations of international criminal law in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. He led the investigation and prosecution of five senior most leaders of the Khmer Rouge namely Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan, and Kang Kek Iew. The last was recently convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Petit also initiated the prosecution of five other Khmer Rouge leaders whose cases are still under investigation by the United Nations-backed tribunal.
Joint criminal enterprise (JCE) is a legal doctrine used during war crimes tribunals to allow the prosecution of members of a group for the actions of the group. This doctrine considers each member of an organized group individually responsible for crimes committed by the group within its common plan or purpose. It specifically arose through the application of the idea of common purpose and has been applied by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav Wars from 1991 to 1999.
Callixte Mbarushimana is a Hutu Rwandan and former United Nations employee (1992–2001) who is alleged to have participated in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. On 28 September 2010, Mbarushimana was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2009. He was arrested in France in October 2010 and extradited to the ICC on 25 January 2011. However, he was released on 23 December 2011 as the ICC found there was insufficient evidence for prosecuting him.
Kimberly Prost is a Canadian jurist currently serving as a judge of the International Criminal Court, assigned to the Trial Division. She was elected to a nine-year term on December 5, 2017, was sworn in on March 9, 2018, and assumed full-time duty on June 11, 2018.
Fatou Bom Bensouda is a Gambian lawyer and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who has served as the Gambian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom since 3 August 2022.
Luis Moreno Ocampo is an Argentine lawyer who served as the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2012. Previously, he had played a major role in Argentina's democratic transition (1983–1991).
Ekaterina Trendafilova is a Bulgarian lawyer and judge with international and domestic experience. She is currently serving as the first President of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers – a position to which she was appointed in December 2016 for a four-year term and took her office on 12 January 2017.
The 2012 ICT Skype controversy was the leaking of Skype conversations and emails between Mohammed Nizamul Huq, head judge and chairman of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, and Ahmed Ziauddin, a Bangladeshi lawyer based in Brussels. These conversations took place during the prosecution of the accused for alleged war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) is a court of Kosovo, located in The Hague (Netherlands), hosting four Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutor's Office, which may perform their activities either in the Netherlands or in Kosovo. The court is currently set up for delegating the trials of the crimes committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary organisation which sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of a Greater Albania. The alleged crimes concern the period 1998–2000, during and at the end of the Kosovo war and directed afterwards against "ethnic minorities and political opponents". The court was formally established in 2016. It is separate from other Kosovar institutions, and independent. It is composed of a Specialist Prosecutor's Office and four Specialist Chambers, with themselves comprising Judges' Chambers and a Registry.
Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua is a Congolese lawyer who served first as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and then as a judge of the International Criminal Court.
International and national courts outside Syria have begun the prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals. War crimes perpetrated by the Syrian government or rebel groups include extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture and imprisonment. "[A]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights is central to achieving and maintaining durable peace in Syria", stated UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine violated international law. The invasion has also been called a crime of aggression under international criminal law, and under some countries' domestic criminal codes – including those of Ukraine and Russia – although procedural obstacles exist to prosecutions under these laws.
