Tagged: jurisdiction

Ukraine Expands Its Acceptance of ICC Jurisdiction

POST WRITTEN BYProf. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

Violence in Ukraine has troubled that nation and the world community for about two years. Recently, Ukraine has renewed and expanded its efforts to afford the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute those responsible for mass crimes committed on its territory. Ukraine is now alleging that Russia is responsible, in part, for such crimes.

Ukraine is not a State Party to the ICC’s Rome Statute. However, as written about in April 2014 post, Ukraine lodged an Article 12(3) declaration, which allows a non-Party State to accept the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes within its subject matter jurisdiction that are committed on the State’s territory. Ukraine’s 2014 declaration alleged that crimes against humanity were committed during internal strife in Ukraine between November 2013 and February 2014, responsibility for which it alleged was attributable to Ukraine’s former President and possibly other senior officials in his government. The ICC Prosecutor has been conducting a preliminary investigation regarding this matter but has not yet decided whether to seek authorization to open a formal investigation that would expand her investigative powers and allow for filing of charges against individuals.

Ukraine has now gone further. In a September 8, 2015 press release the ICC reported that the ICC Registrar acknowledged receipt of a second Article 12(3) declaration by Ukraine, in which Ukraine expands its acceptance of ICC temporal jurisdiction from beyond February 2014 to the indefinite future. Importantly, the declaration attributes responsibility for post-February 2014 war crimes and crimes against humanity to “senior officials of the Russian Federation and leaders of terrorist organizations.” Thus, Ukraine’s second declaration opens a politically potent issue, asking the ICC Prosecutor to conduct at least a preliminary investigation into Russia’s alleged involvement in the violence in Ukraine.

In its September 8 press release, the ICC noted that “[t]he provisions of Part 9 of the Statute relating to international cooperation and judicial assistance apply.” Part 9 of the Rome Statute imposes on State Parties the responsibility “to cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” The Russian Federation, however, is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, and thus has no such responsibility to the ICC.

It will be interesting to see how this matter will develop.

ICC Prosecutor Asked to Reconsider a Matter Involving Israel’s Blockade of Gaza

POST WRITTEN BYProf. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

On July 16, 2015, a 2-1 majority of Pre-Trial Chamber I issued a strongly worded decision finding what it termed numerous “material” errors in the ICC Prosecutor’s decision not to open a formal investigation of war crimes allegedly committed by members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in May 2010 when they intercepted and boarded ships that were attempting to penetrate Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, on November 6, 2014 the ICC Prosecutor issued a report explaining that after months of review, she declined to open a formal investigation of the matter. The report was issued under Article 53(1) of the Rome Statute in response to a request of ICC State Parties, including the Union of Comoros, whose vessels were boarded by the IDF during the May 2010 incident. The report concluded that although there was a reasonable basis to believe that members of the IDF willfully killed ten of the 500+ passengers on one of the vessels, caused serious injury to several others, and committed outrages upon personal dignity of others, a formal investigation was unwarranted because the crimes involved, given the surrounding circumstances, would fail to meet the gravity requirement of Article 17(1)(d) of the Rome Statute.

In January 2015, the Union of Comoros invoked the opportunity provided by Article 53(3)(a) to request the Pre-Trial Chamber seized of the matter to review the Prosecutor’s decision not to proceed and to request reconsideration of the decision. Comoros’s application challenged several conclusions in the Prosecutor’s report.

In its July 16, 2015 decision, the Chamber’s majority discounted some of these challenges but agreed with several others regarding the Prosecutor’s alleged failure to properly address factors relevant to the gravity determination.

Addressing standard of review, the majority stated that a request pursuant to Article 53(3)(a) requires a Chamber “to exercise independent judicial oversight” and apply “exacting legal requirements.” It added that “[i]n the presence of several plausible explanations of the available information,” the Prosecutor must open an investigation so that she can “properly assess the relevant facts.”

Applying this standard, the majority faulted the Prosecutor for at times deciding against investigation of matters on which there were conflicting claims. Of particular importance, the majority suggested that the Prosecutor may have “willfully ignored” credible evidence that the IDF fired upon one of the vessels prior to boarding. Such evidence, if established, would support the proposition that there was a systematic plan to attack civilians on that vessel.

Accordingly, the Chamber issued a request to the Prosecutor to reconsider her decision not to investigate the situation.

The Chamber’s decision involves procedural issues regarding a Chamber’s Article 53(3)(a) review that will have to be resolved in the future. In his dissenting opinion, Judge Péter Kovács argued that, among other failings he perceived, the majority “introduced for the first time a standard for reviewing negative decisions undertaken [by a prosecutor pursuant to Article 53(1)] without explaining the legal basis for its endorsement.” In Judge Kovács’s view, “the Pre-Trial Chamber’s role is merely to make sure that the Prosecutor has not abused her discretion in arriving at her decision not to initiate an investigation ….” Reviewing the evidence and submissions, he concluded that the Prosecutor did not abuse her discretion in this matter.

The ICC Prosecutor Proactively Addresses the Situation in Nigeria

POST WRITTEN BY: Prof. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

On February 2, 2015, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, issued a statement calling on all parties to refrain from violence in the Nigerian elections, which were originally scheduled to be held in February 2015.

The Prosecutor’s statement regarding the danger of election-related violence is grounded in ICC experience. She noted that “[e]xperience has shown that electoral competition, when gone astray, can give rise to violence and in the worst case scenarios, even trigger the commission of mass crimes that ‘shock the conscience of humanity.’” Severe factional post-election violence in Kenya (in 2007-08) and Ivory Coast (in 2010-11) led the Prosecutor to bring criminal charges against individuals in both countries.

The Prosecutor’s warning regarding Nigeria has teeth because preliminary examination conducted by her Office into previous violence in Nigeria have advanced to phase 3 (of four phases). Analysis in phase 3 follows upon previous determination that there is a reasonable basis to believe that requirements for the ICC’s subject matter and territorial jurisdiction can be met, and focuses on the question of whether investigation by national authorities is sufficient so as to preclude further investigation by the ICC.

The Prosecutor is looking into allegations of violence committed by Nigerian security forces, while also giving particular focus to widely reported actions by the Nigerian insurgent group, Boko Haram. On May 8, 2014, the Prosecutor issued a public condemnation of Boko Haram’s abduction of over 200 schoolgirls. In her February 2, 2015 statement, she noted that such actions, “which shock the conscience of humanity,” must be prosecuted by Nigerian authorities or by the ICC.

The ICC’s authorizing statute focuses on the investigation and prosecution of crimes already committed. It does not explicitly set out specific responsibility for the Prosecutor to take proactive measures to prevent future crimes. Nevertheless, in its November 2013 Policy Paper on Preliminary Examinations, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) stated that “prevention of crimes” is one of “the overarching goals of the statute.” Accordingly, the OTP will work “proactively,” which includes “issu[ing] public, preventive statements in order to deter the escalation of violence and the further commission of crimes ….”

To achieve these goals, the Prosecutor noted that she was sending a team from her Office to Nigeria “to further engage with the authorities and encourage the prevention of crimes.” She forcefully stated, “[n]o one should doubt my resolve, whenever necessary, to prosecute individuals responsible for the commission of ICC crimes.”

Following the Prosecutor’s February 2 statement, the Nigerian electoral commission announced that it was postponing the elections until March 28, 2015. The commission said the postponement was necessary because troops needed to protect polling stations in northern Nigeria, which had been diverted to address an upsurge of violence by Boko Haram. The postponement has met with diverse reactions in Nigeria and elsewhere. While some view it as necessary to prevent the disenfranchisement of voters in the north, others suspect it is part of an effort to keep the current government in power.

The State of Palestine Ratifies Rome Statute and Accepts the Court’s Jurisdiction

In a controversial move, the State of Palestine became the 123rd State Party to the Rome Statute when it deposited its instruments of accession to the UN. According to the depositary notification, the action was effected on January 2, 2015 and the Rome Statute will enter into force for the State of Palestine on April 1, 2015 in accordance with Article 126(2).

In the meantime, however, the State of Palestine filed Article 12(3) declaration accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction

for the purpose of identifying, prosecuting and judging authors and accomplices of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, since June 13, 2014.

Unlike the other Article 12(3) declarations filed with the Court so far (as previously discussed here, here, and here), the Palestinian one does not identify a specific time frame within which the Court is entitled to exercise its jurisdiction. On the contrary, it specifically articulates that it “shall be valid for an unspecified period of time,” ensuring that the Court can exercise its jurisdiction within Palestinian territory until the Rome Statute enters into force on April 1, 2015. At that point, Article 12(3) declaration is likely to have little or no importance since the Rome Statute, as the later-in-time instrument, will be in force.

Another State Ratifies Crime of Aggression Amendments

To follow up on our previous post, the International Criminal Court (ICC) reports in its December 8, 2014 press release that on December 5, 2014, another state, Georgia, deposited the instrument of ratification of the 2010 amendments to the Rome Statute on the crime of aggression. This ratification brings the number of ratifications of the crime of aggression amendments to a total of twenty so far. The press release further notes that Georgia “is the seventh country from the Eastern European Group to have ratified this set of amendments,” following Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The crime of aggression was included in the Rome Statute in 1998 but the definition of the crime and the process by which the Court can exercise jurisdiction over this crime was not articulated until the 2010 Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. These amendments are set to go in effect on January 1, 2017 and the Court will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once thirty States Parties have ratified the amendments.

Article 8 bis (1) articulates the definition of crime of aggression as

the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

Article 8 bis (2) further states that act of aggression means

the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.

The definition directly draws on the principles articulated in and established by the UN Charter, namely Article 2(4). In light of the continuous situation in Ukraine and Crimea, can we expect more ratifications soon?