The establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002 was welcomed as one of the most important developments in international co-operation since the end of World War II.
As a senior UN official during this period, I was a co-author of a key report complementing the ICC and played a broader role in advocating its establishment. I was drafted in to help sell the ICC to the Japanese Parliament as one of my last acts before leaving the UN.
But, like former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, I have come to question my involvement and advocacy, particularly in light of ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s outrageous decision to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, plus three Hamas leaders. This is a grotesque inversion of international criminal justice. The UN charter was never meant to be a tyrant’s charter of impunity or a constitutional instrument for self-protection, but I never expected the ICC would be weaponised against democracies defending themselves against terrorists.
There is no moral equivalence between the head of an elected government and the commander of a terrorist organisation who planned and ordered the October 7th massacre, which Hamas has boasted it will repeat so Israel will “taste new ways of death”.
There is no parallel between terrorists who target civilians to kill, maim, rape and abduct and a professional and disciplined military. It is clear Israel and Hamas cannot coexist peacefully. There was a ceasefire in place before Hamas attacked. Another ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power in Gaza with the capacity to regenerate terrorist battalions would deliver a great victory to the terrorists of October 7th. Hamas could end the civilian carnage immediately by releasing all remaining hostages, giving up arms and surrendering.
The allegation that Israel is deliberately starving civilians as a method of warfare is baseless. Israel has overseen the delivery of half a million tonnes of relief supplies to civilians in nearly 30,000 aid trucks. In contrast, Hamas steals and profiteers much of the aid.
The ICC is mandated to step in only when national authorities fail to hold alleged perpetrators of war crimes to account. Israel is exceptionally punctilious, more than Australians and the U.S., in investigating allegations of wrongful killing and prosecuting its soldiers if evidence points to their culpability.
The ICC came into effect in July 2002 and has 124 state parties. Several countries, including China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and the U.S., have not joined, meaning only about one-third of the world’s population comes under its jurisdiction. It is based at The Hague and has more than 900 staff members from 100 countries; its 2024 budget is €187m (£159m). In 22 years the court has issued 46 arrest warrants and recorded 10 convictions and four acquittals. Is this value for money? The court has been criticised for focusing on crimes committed by smaller countries and turning a blind eye to misdeeds of powerful countries. The ICC issued an unenforceable arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year. But the ICC has not even bothered to investigate possible crimes by China against Uighurs.
The ICC isn’t embedded into a broader system of democratic policymaking and there’s no political check on it. Why should it have any authority over constitutionally legitimated democracies? If not over them, can it fairly claim jurisdiction over non-democracies such as China and Russia? The most sustained criticism of the ICC came from African nations that faulted it for unfair targeting and jeopardising delicate peace negotiations in Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Libya.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2009. The African Union warned this could jeopardise peace talks. Kenya refused to hand over suspects to the ICC as required by the court’s rules. Instead the African Union adopted a resolution calling for a mass withdrawal from the ICC. In a sign of the widening rebellion, Bashir was welcomed to the India-Africa summit in New Delhi in 2015 and held bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s position was that Security Council Resolution 1593, urging states to co operate with the ICC, wasn’t binding on non-parties. South African Deputy Minister Obed Bapela said the ICC had “lost its direction”.
Echoing the two-decade-old African complaint, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the ICC’s action is “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”. The three-judge panel that will consider Khan’s request should decline to follow the prosecutor’s lead. If they agree to the request, all countries will be under an obligation to arrest Netanyahu should he set foot in their territory.
If this transpires, I will regret my part in the ICC’s development. Criminal law cannot replace a country’s public or foreign policy. As control of global governance institutions passes into the hands of countries with incompatible values, does the West risk being trapped in a prison of its own making, or will this attempted overreach sound the ICC’s death knell?
Ramesh Thakur, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General, is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute, and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. His new book, Our Enemy, the Government: How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power (Brownstone Institute, 2023), is out now. This article was first published by the Australian.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
https://tass.com/politics/1789991
What’s really going on?
As anticipated, Russia, made overconfident by a ‘major’ assault comprising a reinforced company with two tanks and 21 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) in the direction of the Novyi Microraion in eastern Chasiv Yar on May 17, now intends to invade Poland.
Medvedev stated in a post on his Russian-language Telegram channel on May 17 that Russia’s “sanitary [buffer] zone” must at least extend over all central Ukraine and a significant part of western Ukraine.
Medvedev claimed that if Ukraine continues to strike Russian cities, then Russian forces will have to extend the sanitary zone further to Ukraine’s western border with Poland or within Poland itself.
‘If it goes on like this, the guaranteed sanitary zone will be somewhere at the border with Poland. Or even inside Poland,” the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council suggested.’
Tass
Hopefully Tusk gets wasted during this manoeuvre , anyway it will be Nato,s fault if this does happen !
That would be delightful Freddy.
It will certainly be NATO’s fault if it doesn’t!
I am no fan of the simpering Tusk but wishing for him to be ‘wasted’ is a particularly infelicitous aspiration right now……
Cashless Your Spending Monitored Forever – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, including your local Reform Party candidate, your local vicar, media and friends online.
https://kiis.com.ua/?lang=rus&cat=reports&id=302
What’s really going on?
Putin is engaging in a brutal and barbaric colonisation of Eastern Ukraine.
‘…there were few “outright separatists” in Donbas before 2014. “It’s worth remembering that in 1991, a vast majority of the Donbas population voted for the independence of Ukraine, and by 2014, in spite of all kinds of complaints about the Kyiv government, they thought of Donbas as part and parcel of independent Ukraine,”
‘…regional politicians — like Viktor Yanukovych, who served as the governor of the Donetsk region from 1997 to 2002 — had a history of using the “threat of autonomy and separatism” as leverage against the central government in Kyiv. When Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, Kuromiya said, Donbas effectively “took over” the country, “signaling in a sense that Donbas had finally been integrated into Ukraine.”
“I am certain that before Russia’s invasion, the vast majority of the Donbas population thought of their future in independent Ukraine, not in an annexed region of Russia.’
‘…in 1991, the majority of the population of the Donbas supported Ukrainian independence — 83.9 percent of Donetsk residents, and 83.6 percent of Luhansk residents voted for it.’
Hiroaki Kuromiya, Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s, (1998)
Well the Ukrainians would say that wouldn’t they.
Other Ukrainians refuse to be evacuated from the villages north of Kharkov because they would rather wait for the Russians to come, said a Ukrainian conscript tasked with expediting the evacuation. This could explain the rapid advance of the Russians in the area, occupying over 70sq km according to Lt. Gen K. Budanov.
I think your translation might be a bit wonky or is missing a bit. The people in Donbas actually expressed a wish to be an autonomous region (ie self-governing) within an independent Ukraine. However the “independent Ukraine” was in the process of a military intervention to prevent this when Russia stepped in on the side of the majority in Donbas.
And ever since the Ukrainian military has been wasting its shells and missiles targeting the naughty civilians in Donetsk city, aka punishment beatings.
“Boris Johnson … the “most consequential leader since Thatcher”, according to the Telegraph.”
He was a “leader” since Thatcher. That’s about all the truth contained in that statement.
Three consequences that Johnson is responsible for – Brexit, covid madness, climate madness. All massively consequential, surely.
Does it also get a share of their liability; moral or financial?
My thoughts exactly, if I were them I’d be distancing myself from the clot shots not claiming ownership,.. just in case (when) the avalanche of law suits hits the fan!
“Idiotic Net Zero rules are driving Europe’s carmakers to extinction”
Possibly should more accurately read;
”Idiotic Net Zero rules are driving extinction”
There, fixed it for them.
The term “nudge” should be dropped. It is the warm fuzzy term the manipulators use.
“psychological manipulation” as given in the sub-title is more accurate. At the risk of being verbose, include “unethical”.
“The agony of sex education”
Modern sex education is nothing more than a Satanic pretext for exposing children to porn.
“There’s nothing racist about Anglo-Saxons”
Excellent article by Nick Cohen, describing how the whole research field of Anglo-Saxon history decided to change its name because ONE Third World Ethnic complained.
Kneeling hasn’t gone out of fashion yet, it seems.