Latest in International Criminal Court (ICC)
With John Bolton as national security adviser, both the United States and the International Criminal Court should take steps to avoid a collision.
Bolton, who has been a ferocious opponent of the International Criminal Court, will likely be assuming his post just as the court opens its first ever investigation of United States conduct.
In its response to Russia’s attack, the United Kingdom could use international legal institutions to walk the line between the shortcomings of economic and diplomatic sanctions and outright war.
If the ICC opens an investigation into CIA "black sites," the United States could rally other non-member states to its side.
More than six months after the International Criminal Court announced tyhat the prosecutor's office would soon make a decision on whether to launch a full investigation in Afghanistan, we are still waiting to hear what comes next.
Challenging the ICC’s jurisdiction based on the status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) that Afghanistan entered into with the US in 2002 is, in my opinion, the best US option if its goal is to avoid the ICC investigation. But no one has yet presented the SOFA to the ICC Prosecutor.
The Jerusalem Post published yesterday a lengthy profile of Israel’s Military Advocate-General, Sharon Afek.
I wrote yesterday in Foreign Policy about the coming ICC investigation in Afghanistan. Unless something changes dramatically in the next days and weeks, that investigation will include some allegations against U.S. personnel (alongside a much broader array of possible crimes by insurgent forces and Afghan government officials). Specifically, the prosecutor has focused on U.S. detention practices between 2003 and 2005.
The recent campaign of violence in the Philippines has received plenty of attention. Since the election of Rodrigo Duterte, who campaigned on a platform of cracking down on crime, as many as 2,000 people have been executed, many on the suspicion of being drug traffickers.
I've written here previously on the possible activation of the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. Twenty-eight of the requisite thirty countries have now ratified the amendments agreed to at the 2010 Kampala conference. It appears likely that the additional ratifications will arrive in a matter of months.