International Criminal Justice in bello?

The International Criminal Court (ICC) plays a particularly delicate role in situations of ongoing armed conflicts, both from a legal and a political perspective. While the primary objective of the ICC Statute is to end impunity, States Parties and the UN Security Council were mainly driven by political considerations when they triggered ICC jurisdiction over the situations in northern Uganda and Darfur. In this book, the author discusses strategies within the legal framework governing the Court to counter such politicization. He concludes that although the ICC can have beneficial effects on ongoing armed conflicts, its primary raison d’être should not be to influence politics but to continue to fight impunity in the long run.

Philipp Kastner, Dr. iur. (2009), University of Innsbruck, Austria, is a DCL/PhD candidate at McGill University in Montreal (Quebec), Canada. His research focuses on the resolution of armed conflicts, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, legal pluralism and legal theory.