Article

The contribution of the International Criminal Court to increasing respect for international humanitarian law

Tim McCormack

• University of Tasmania law review, Vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, p. 22-46

English

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This article is based on remarks the author made to the University of Tasmania on the 10th anniversary of opening of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for signature. The author aims to assess the contribution of the ICC to the development of IHL. He discusses how the ICC’s failure, at the time of writing, to begin the trial of a single case was seen as indicative of the court’s ineffectiveness. The author points out that the ICC was still in its early stages and had already overcome significant hurdles in its creation. The author outlines two major contributions the ICC has made to increasing global respect for IHL. The first of these is that the ICC has raised global expectations that those responsible for atrocities must be held accountable. The author cites the growing willingness by governments to take more seriously the domestic prosecution of international criminal law and the fact that domestic policies enforcing international criminal law are also subject to much greater scrutiny in the ICC-era. The second contribution is that the ICC has been a catalyst for countries to implement domestic criminal legislation covering violations of IHL. The author argues for states to proactively enforce IHL through domestic criminal prosecutions. [Summary by students at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (IHRP)]

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