ABSTRACT
The twentieth century saw a number of attempts to create a permanent court to adjudicate cases involving the worst sorts of crimes that people commit – genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. From the Leipzig trials after World War I, through Nuremburg and Tokyo to the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ad hoc international tribunals have been implemented. As these tribunals carried out their mandates, over the course of six decades, a permanent international court designed to try the “worst of crimes” committed by high-ranking government officials was slowly developed. The International Criminal Court (ICC) went into full effect in June 2001 with the purpose of prosecuting those most responsible for the commission of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. As of January 2010, 110 countries are States Parties to the Statute. Additionally, three States Parties, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, have referred situations occurring on their territories to the Court, and the United Nations Security Council has referred the situations in Darfur, Sudan, and Libya – non-States Parties – to the Court. Cote d’Ivoire has also voluntarily submitted itself to the Court’s authority for actions during the civil war of the early 2000s. The Court is also actively conducting investigations into Kenyan election violence, the January 2009 Israel-Palestine conflicts, and the Georgia-Ossetia conflict.
