Why Do we Need an International Criminal Court?

Why Do we Need an International Criminal Court?

... To achieve justice for all



"For nearly half a century -- almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence -- the General Assembly has recognized the need to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide. Many thought . . . that the horrors of the Second World War -- the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust -- could never happen again. And yet they have. In Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Rwanda. Our time -- this decade even -- has shown us that man's capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide . . . is now a word of our time, too, a heinous reality that calls for a historic response."
-- Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General

To take over when national criminal justice institutions are unwilling or unable to act


"Crimes under international law by their very nature often require the direct or indirect participation of a number of individuals at least some of whom are in positions of governmental authority or military command."
-- Report of the International Law Commission, 1996
Nations agree that criminals should normally be brought to justice by national institutions. But in times of conflict, whether internal or international, such national institutions are often either unwilling or unable to act, usually for one of two reasons. Governments often lack the political will to prosecute their own citizens, or even high-level officials, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia. Or national institutions may have collapsed, as in the case of Rwanda.