International Criminal Court eyes role beyond war-crimes trials

Mr. Ocampo says recent experience in Kenya offers an example of how the court's existence is changing behaviors and potentially reducing the kinds of conditions that have led to court action.

Kenya is one of a list of countries, including Colombia, Sri Lanka, Cote d'Ivoire, and Gaza in the Palestinian territories, where the ICC has opened initial inquiries into rights-abuse cases that could turn into full-blown investigations.

But Ocampo says that in Kenya, government representatives sought him out and committed to providing the information he needed to answer accusations of crimes and abuses by officials in the post-elections period.

"That's important," Ocampo says, "because it's important we keep the state working with us."

Ocampo notes that Afghanistan is an ICC signatory, so the court has "normal jurisdiction" there. Right now, he says, the court is simply assessing cases of "collateral damage" and alleged torture to see whether they warrant a full investigation.

But the implication of such an inquiry – that NATO and American forces might be charged with a crime by the ICC – is what led the Bush administration to rescind President Clinton's signing of the Rome statute.

Court advocates note that by the end of his second term, President Bush was sounding more accepting of the court – especially after his own conclusion that "genocide" was occurring in Darfur. That warming trend has continued under the Obama team, with some court supporters expecting the administration to move toward joining the ICC.

"If they don't," says Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, "we will be on them like white on rice." That desire to see the US inside the ICC could influence how the court approaches a case like Afghanistan, if achieving global representation is seen to be of greater long-term value than pressing ahead on prickly questions of justified soldier conduct.

As Mr. Wenaweser notes, having 110 of the UN's 192 countries in the ICC is "great." But he adds that "only universal coverage will create a truly global network of international criminal justice."

-----

Follow us on Twitter.

Previous

1 | 2