Taken hostage by the Bush administration, the renewal of the UN Mission in Bosnia is from now on dependent on the disposition of guarantee granting immunity from arrest and prosecution of UN peace keeping personnel before the International Criminal Court. The US’ concerns of a politicized and partisan ICC are irrational. Their concerns are based more in paranoia towards international justice than a serious legal analysis of the ICC statute.
The FIDH argues that the Rome Statute provides that:
– conforming to the principle of complementarity, the ICC will only have jurisdiction if a state is incapable or does not pursue prosecution at the national level. Thus, national jurisdictions preserve their attributes and primary responsibilities of prosecution and judgment.
– The preliminary division of justice will assume control of the prosecutor as soon as the information gathering phase is underway. As such the prosecutor will have to obtain authorisation from the division to begin investigations.
In short, the FIDH notes that court’s jurisdiction is applied equally to everyone before it with out any distinction made based on official capacity. The statute’s article 27 provides that no immunity will be recognised including that of head of state or government. As a result, any ordinary exoneration appears to be in complete contradiction with the text and the spirit of the statute.
In addition, this last offensive taken by the Bush administration constitutes a serious alteration to the statute. It should be noted that only the Conference of Revisions, which will take place 7 years after the entry into force of the court, in 2009, will have the power to amend the statute.
Last June 28th, Uruguay, Gambia and Lithuania effectively brought the number of states ratifying the statute to 74. The fight brought by the Bush administration to slow down the process of the creation of the court thus ends in failure.
Only the Bush administration’s ultimate attempt to sabotage the effectiveness of the first permanent international jurisdiction by making a court "a la carte" will lead to the court’s failure.
>>> Take action: tell George Bush that you oppose his anti-ICC policy! Sign the FIDH petition to the president of the United States of America