Purpose of the ICC

"The International Court nourishes our hope that in the future the worst violations of international law such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes will not go unpunished." (Chancellor Gerhard Schröder)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent international tribunal that will try individuals responsible for the most serious international crimes.

The ICC will prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, all defined in the Court's Statute, and of crimes of aggression as soon as that crime has been adequately defined and the modalities of the jurisdiction of the Court determined. The ICC will help ensure that these serious crimes, which have long been recognized by the international community, no longer go unpunished because of the unwillingness or inability of individual countries to prosecute them.

UN Sec. General Kofi Annan speaks at the signing ceremony in Rome in July 1998.

The two ad hoc war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda are similar to the ICC but have limited geographical scope, while the ICC will be global in its reach. The ICC, as a permanent court, will also avoid the delay and start-up costs of creating country specific tribunals from scratch each time the need arises.

In 1998, 160 countries attended a UN-sponsored conference in Rome to draft a treaty (the 'Rome Statute') for the establishment of the ICC. After five weeks of intense negotiations, 120 countries voted to adopt the treaty. Only seven countries voted against it (including China, Libya, Iraq, and the United States) and 21 abstained. Before the Court can be set up, 60 countries need to ratify the treaty. The Statute provided that the treaty remained open for signature until December 31, 2000. By that deadline, 139 states signed the treaty. To date, 74 countries have ratified it, enough ratifications to allow the Statute to come into force on July 1.

The UN ambassadors from Ireland, Bulgaria, the Congo, Cambodia and Bosnia and Herzegovina shake hands after depositing their ratifications of the Rome Statute at the UN in April 2002.

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International Criminal Court

Purpose of the ICC

Germany's Participation in
Establishing the ICC

Germany's Viewpoint on the ICC

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