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ABSTRACT
On the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as constituted under the Rome Statute, in responding to genocide is worth evaluating. This article assesses the effectiveness of the ICC in addressing genocide, with a focus on the Al-Bashir Case (case concerning genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur, Sudan) - the first ICC proceeding against a sitting Head of State charged with genocide. It first singles out the ICC’s role in promoting international solidarity to prevent genocide, break cycles of violence, and enhance the likelihood of prosecution. It also discusses the legal obligation to strengthen international cooperation for the Al-Bashir Case, under the Genocide Convention, and considers the relevant contexts of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The analysis has incorporated legal and criminological literature, alongside scholarship of international relations from voluminous resources. This article emphasises the ongoing necessity for international cooperation within the ICC to effectively implement its mechanisms: investigation, prosecution, principle of complementarity, and deterrence. It suggests that this aim can be attained through encouraging Member States of both the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention to actively participate in responding to genocide.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Andy Aydın-Aitchison, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Edinburgh, for providing valuable feedback on the drafts of the literature review for this article. I am grateful to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for their meticulous review of my manuscript and their numerous insightful comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), 79.
2 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, December 9, 1948, in force January 12, 1951 (hereinafter ‘Genocide Convention’), art. 2 reads as: ‘In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’.
3 The crimes punishable under Genocide Convention are: ‘(a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide’, see Ibid., at arts. 3 and 6.
4 William A. Schabas, An Introduction to the International Criminal Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 8.
5 Ibid., at 9.
6 David H.N. Johnson, ‘Draft Code of Offences Against the Peace and Security of Mankind’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 4 (1955): 445.
7 Ibid.
8 James Crawford, ‘The ILC Adopts a Statute for an International Criminal Court’, The American Journal of International Law 89, no. 2 (1995): 404–5.
9 Max du Plessis, ‘The Creation of the ICC: Implications for Africa’s Despots, Crackpots and Hotspots’, African Security Studies 12, no. 4 (2003): 6.
10 For further details, see UN General Assembly, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (last amended 2010), July 17, 1998 (hereinafter ‘Rome Statute’), arts. 6, 7, 8, and 8 bis.
11 Ibid., at art. 13(b).
12 Erik Mose, ‘Main Achievements of the ICTR’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 3, no. 4 (2005): 920–21; Minna Schrag, ‘Lessons Learned from ICTY Experience’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 2, no. 2 (2004): 427.
13 See generally Payam Akhavan, ‘Are International Criminal Tribunals a Disincentive to Peace?: Reconciling Judicial Romanticism with Political Realism’, Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. (3) (2009): 624–54; Schabas, ‘An Introduction to the International Criminal Court’.
14 The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, ICC-02/05-01/09, Pre-Trial (hereinafter ‘Al-Bashir Case’). https://www.icc-cpi.int/darfur/albashir (accessed October 29, 2022).
15 Maria Francisca Saraiva, ‘Major Violence (Crimes) Against the International Community’, in International Criminal Justice: A Dialogue Between Two Cultures, ed. M. Kowalski and P.G. Teles (Lisboa: Universidade Autónoma De Lisboa, 2017), 78; William A. Schabas, ‘The International Criminal Court at Ten’, The International Journal of Ethical Leadership 3 (2015): 11. For a general discussion, see Stefan Harrendorf, ‘How Can Criminology Contribute to an Explanation of International Crimes?’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 12 (2014): 231; Andy Aydın-Aitchison, ‘Criminological Theory and International Crimes: Examining the Potential’, in Criminological Approaches to International Criminal Law, ed. I. Bantekas and E. Mylonaki (2014), 22.
16 ICC, ‘Situations under Investigations’. https://www.icc-cpi.int/situations-under-investigations (accessed April 2, 2022).
17 Allard Duursma and Tanja R. Müller, ‘The ICC Indictment Against Al-Bashir and Its Repercussions for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations in Darfur’, Third World Quarterly (2019): 890.
18 ‘Al-Bashir Case’.
19 Carlos E. Gomez, ‘The International Criminal Court’s Decision on the Rohingya Crisis: The Need for a Critical Redefinition of Trans-Border Jurisdiction to Address Human Rights’, California Western International Law Journal 50 (2020): 184–8.
20 See generally Schabas, ‘An Introduction to the International Criminal Court’.
21 Antonio Cassese, International Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 343.
22 David Luban, ‘Fairness to Rightness: Jurisdiction, Legality, and the Legitimacy of International Criminal Law’, Georgetown University Law Center, Working Paper No. 1154117 (2008).
23 Alexander K.A. Greenwalt, ‘The Pluralism of International Criminal Law’, Indiana Law Journal 86, no. 3 (2011): 1064–129. See also Genocide Convention, art. I.
24 Thomas E. Davies, ‘How the Rome Statute Weakens the International Prohibition on Incitement to Genocide’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 22, (2009): 245–70.
25 Daley J. Birkett, ‘Twenty Years of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Appraising the State of National Implementing Legislation in Asia’, Chinese Journal of International Law 18 (2019): 353–92.
26 Ibid.
27 Marina Aksenova, ‘Solidarity as a Moral and Legal Basis for Crimes Against Humanity: A Durkheimian Perspective’, in Breaking the Cycle of Mass Atrocities: Criminological and Socio-Legal Approaches in International Criminal Law, ed. M. Aksenova, E. van Sliedregt and S. Parmentier (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019), 82.
28 When considering the value of Durkheim’s theory for international criminal law, a discipline that emerged after his death, it is argued that Durkheim’s discourse achieves a high level of generalisation, which allows scholars to abstractly analyse and apply his theories to contemporary circumstances. See Jean-Pierre Dupuy, The Mark of Sacred (California: Stanford University Press, 2013), 123.
29 Marina Aksenova, ‘Introduction: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Atrocities: Criminological and Socio-Legal Approaches to International Criminal Law’, in Breaking the Cycle of Mass Atrocities: Criminological and Socio-Legal Approaches in International Criminal Law, ed. M. Aksenova, E. van Sliedregt and S. Parmentier (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019).
30 Genocide Convention, art. I reads as: ‘The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish’.
31 David Bosco, Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 23.
32 Schabas, ‘An Introduction to the International Criminal Court’.
33 Ibid.
34 Neil J. Kritz, ‘Coming to Terms with Atrocities: A Review of Accountability Mechanisms for Mass Violations of Human Rights’, Law and Contemporary Problems 59, no. 4 (1996): 129.
35 Christian Tomuschat, ‘The Legacy of Nuremberg’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 4 (2006): 833.
36 Ibid., at 832.
37 Amabelle C. Asuncion, ‘Pulling the Stops on Genocide: The State or the Individual?’, The European Journal of International Law 20, no. 4 (2010): 1212–18.
38 ‘The Importance of the Genocide Convention for the Development of International Criminal Justice’, International Criminal Court, December 8, 2017, 2. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/171208-ICC-President-remarks-at-Genocide-Convention-Commemoration.pdf (accessed March 2, 2022).
39 Parliamentarians for Global Action, ‘Signatories Which Have Not Ratified’, January 16, 2022. https://www.pgaction.org/ilhr/rome-statute/signed-but-not-ratified.html (accessed September 30, 2023). See also United Nations Treaty Collection, ‘United Nations Treaty Database entry regarding the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court’, January 18, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110118070450/http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&lang=en (accessed September 30, 2023).
40 Ibid.
41 Compare ‘Genocide Convention’, art. II, with Rome Statute, art. 6.
42 Rome Statute, art. 5.
43 Aksenova, ‘Solidarity as a Moral and Legal Basis for Crimes Against Humanity’.
44 Ibid., 78.
45 Ibid.
46 Immi Tallgren, ‘The Durkheimian Spell of International Criminal Justice?’, Revue Interdisciplinaire d'Etudes Juridiques 71 (2013): 142.
47 Aydın-Aitchison, ‘Criminological Theory and International Crimes’.
48 Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 31.
49 Cooperation and Judicial Assistance Database (CJAD), ‘Republic of Kiribati’. https://cjad.nottingham.ac.uk/en/legislation/715/keyword/46/ (accessed April 3, 2022).
50 Rome Statute, art. 17, supplemented by arts. 18 and 19.
51 ‘Japan and the Rome Statute’, Parlamentiarians for Global Action. https://www.pgaction.org/ilhr/rome-statute/japan.html (accessed March 5, 2022).
52 The Sankei Shimbun, ‘Japan Must Move Quickly to Fix Its Domestic Law So It Can Sign Genocide Convention’, Japan Forward, March 1, 2021. https://japan-forward.com/japan-must-move-quickly-to-fix-its-domestic-law-so-it-can-sign-genocide-convention/ (accessed April 6, 2022).
53 Maartje Weerdesteijn and Barbora Hola, ‘“Tool in the R2P Toolbox”? Analysing the Role of the International Criminal Court in the Three Pillars of the Responsibility to Protect’, Criminal Law Forum 31 (2020): 377.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Theodor Meron, ‘War Crimes in Yugoslavia and the Development of International Law’, American Journal of International Law 88 (1994): 86; Leila Nadya Sadat, ‘The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’, in Rule of Law through Human Rights and International Criminal Justice, ed. C.R. Majinge (England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 135.
57 David Cohen, ‘Seeking Justice on the Cheap: Is the East Timor Tribunal Really a Model for the Future?’, Asia Pacific Issues 61 (2002): 2–3; Scott Luftglass, ‘Crossroads in Cambodia: The United Nation's Responsibility to Withdraw Involvement from the Establishment of a Cambodian Tribunal to Prosecute the Khmer Rouge’, Viginia Law Review 90 (2004): 897–8.
58 Ibid.; Theodor Meron, ‘Answering for War Crimes: Lessons from the Balkans’, Foreign Affairs, (1997): 762.
59 United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, ‘The ICTR in Brief’. https://unictr.irmct.org/en/tribunal (accessed April 11, 2022).
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ‘About the ICTY’. https://www.icty.org/en/about (accessed April 11, 2022).
63 United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (UNSC (UN Doc S/1999/1257), 1999) at 3.
64 Ibid.; Martin Ngoga, ‘The Institutionalisation of Impunity: A Judicial Perspective of the Rwandan Genocide’, in After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond, ed. P. Clark and Z. Kaufman (New York City: Colombia University Press, 2009), 159.
65 Morten Bergsmo and Philippa Webb, ‘Some Lessons for the International Criminal Court from the International Judicial Response to the Rwandan Genocide’, in After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond, ed. P. Clark and Z. Kaufman (New York City: Colombia University Press, 2009), 351.
66 Catherine Gegout, ‘The International Criminal Court: Limits, Potential and Conditions for the Promotion of Justice and Peace’, Third World Quarterly 34 (2013): 801.
67 Reuters, ‘What is the International Criminal Court?’, March 17, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-international-criminal-court-2023-03-17/ (accessed September 27, 2023).
68 Ibid.
69 The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant against Al-Bashir, accusing him of genocide by: (i) killing, (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm, and (iii) deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, ‘12 July 2010: Genocide Indictment for Sudan’s President Al-Bashir’. https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/12-july-2010-genocide-indictment-for-sudans-president-al-bashir/ (accessed September 27, 2023).
70 Ibid.
71 For further details, see Rome Statute, at art. 15.
72 Ibid., at art. 53(1)(c).
73 Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, ‘Update on Communications Received by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court’, February 10, 2006. https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/e97e28/pdf/ (accessed March 29, 2022).
74 Birju Kotecha, ‘The International Criminal Court’s Selectivity and Procedural Justice’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 18 (2020): 115.
75 Ibid., at 115.
76 ICC, ‘Situations under Investigations’.
77 Ibid.
78 Duursma and Müller, ‘The ICC Indictment against Al-Bashir’.
79 Ibid., at 890–1.
80 Kevin C. Dunn, ‘The Lord’s Resistance Army and African International Relations’, African Security 3 (2010): 50; Kate Cronin-Furman, ‘Managing Expectations: International Criminal Trials and the Prospects for Deterrence of Mass Atrocity’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 7 (2013): 448.
81 Gomez, ‘The International Criminal Court’s Decision on the Rohingya Crisis’.
82 ‘The Case against China at the ICC’, eurasianet, August 12, 2022. https://eurasianet.org/the-case-against-china-at-the-icc (accessed September 11, 2022).
83 ICC, ‘Decision on the Prosecution’s Request for a Ruling on Jurisdiction under Article 19(3) of the Statute’, ICC-RoC46(3)-01/18-37, September 6, 2018. https://www.icccpi.int/Pages/record.aspx?docNo=ICC-RoC46(3)-01/18-37 (accessed September 11, 2022).
84 ICC, ‘Report on Preliminary Examination Activities’, December 14, 2020. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/2020-PE/2020-pe-report-eng.pdf (accessed September 11, 2022).
85 Julian Ku and Jide Nzelibe, ‘Do International Criminal Tribunals Deter or Exacerbate Humanitarian Atrocities?’, Washington University Law Review 84 (2006): 789.
86 Georghios M. Pikis, The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010), 13.
87 James F. Alexander, ‘The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of Atrocities: Predicting the Court’s Impact’, Villanova Law Review 54 (2009): 11.
88 Christopher W. Mullins and Dawn L. Rothe, ‘The Ability of the International Criminal Court to Deter Violations of International Criminal Law: A Theoretical Assessment’, International Criminal Law Review 10 (2010): 771–2.
89 Tom Buitelaar, ‘The ICC and the Prevention of Atrocities: Criminological Perspectives’, Human Rights Review 17 (2016): 286.
90 Cronin-Furman, ‘Managing Expectations’, 443.
91 Mullins and Rothe, ‘The Ability of the International Criminal Court to Deter’, 773–4.
92 Kirsten Ainley, ‘The International Criminal Court on Trial’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 24 (2011): 309.
93 Hyeran Jo and Beth A. Simmons, ‘Can the International Criminal Court Deter Atrocity?’, International Organization 70, no. 3 (2016): 446.
94 Please read Article 17(2) and (3) for gathering further details as to what is meant by ‘unwillingness’ or ‘inability’ of the countries to carry out trial proceedings.
95 Rome Statute, at preamble and art. 1.
96 Martha Minow, ‘Do Alternative Justice Mechanisms Deserve Recognition in International Criminal Law?: Truth Commissions, Amnesties, and Complementarity at the International Criminal Court’, Harvard International Law Journal 60 (2019): 4.
97 Susan Somers, ‘Rule 11 of bis of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Referral of Indictments to National Courts’, Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 30, no. 1 (2007): 175.
98 Rome Statute, at paragraph 4 of the Preamble.
99 ICC, ‘Situations under Investigations’.
100 Sarah M.H. Nouwen and Wouter G. Werner, ‘Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan’, European Journal of International Law 21 (2011): 954.
101 ICC, ‘Report of the Court on Complementarity Report to the Assembly of States Parties’, November 11, 2011. 10th session. https://asp.icc-cpi.int/sites/asp/files/asp_docs/ASP10/ICC-ASP-10-23-ENG.pdf (accessed 27, 2023).
102 Benjamin J. Appel, ‘In the Shadow of the International Criminal Court’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 1 (2018): 3–28, 9.
103 Minow, ‘Do Alternative Justice Mechanisms Deserve Recognition in International Criminal Law?’, 40.
104 Forest Peoples Programme, ‘Challenging Impunity for Genocide in Colombia – A Briefing Paper by FPP and the Cañamomo Lomaprieta Indigenous Reserve’, March 26, 2021. https://www.forestpeoples.org/en/rights-land-natural-resources/briefing-paper/2021/challenging-impunity-genocide-colombia-briefing (accessed 27, 2023).
105 Human Rights Watch, ‘Guinea: Stadium Massacre Victims Deserve Justice’, July 3, 2013. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/03/guinea-high-level-charges-2009-massacre (accessed 27, 2023).
106 Ibid.
107 Sarah Nouwen, Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 266.
108 Franziska Boehme, ‘‘We Chose Africa’: South Africa and the Regional Politics of Cooperation with the International Criminal Court’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 11 (2017): 63; Ewelina U. Ochab and David Alton, ‘The Genocide in Nigeria—A Mirror Image of Darfur’. in State Responses to Crimes of Genocide. Rethinking Political Violence (Lomdon: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 175–6.
109 United Nations Digital Library, ‘Security Council resolution 1593 (2005) [on referring the situation in Darfur since 1 July 2002 to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court]’, March 31, 2005. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/544817?ln=en (accessed October 8, 2022).
110 ICC, ‘Pre-Trial Chamber I Issues a Second Warrant of Arrest Against Omar Al Bashir for Counts of Genocide’, July 12, 2010. https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-second-warrant-arrest-against-omar-al-bashir-counts-genocide (accessed April 4, 2022).
111 Ibid.; See also Duursma and Müller, ‘The ICC Indictment against Al-Bashir’, 895.
112 Secretary of State Colin L Powell, ‘Text of Colin Powell Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington DC’, September 9, 2004. www.voanews.com/english/archive/2004-09/a-2004-09-09-8-Text.cfm (accessed April 4, 2022).
113 Samuel Totten and Eric Markusen, ‘The US Government Darfur Genocide Investigation’, Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 2 (2005): 279–90.
114 Ibid.
115 ‘Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Violations of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law in Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General—Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004’, UN Doc S/2005/60, January 25, 2004, paras 489–522, 640–641. www.un.org/News/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf (accessed September 28, 2023).
116 ICC, ‘Decision on the Prosecution’s Application for a Warrant of Arrest against Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir’, ICC-02/05-01/09, March 4, 2009, para 1. https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/e26cf4/ (accessed September 29, 2023).
117 Ibid., para 111.
118 ICC, ‘Pre-Trial Chamber I Issues a Second Warrant of Arrest’.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid.
121 ICC, ‘Situations under Investigations’.
122 Kurt Mills, ‘Bashir is Dividing Us: African and the International Criminal Court’, Human Rights Quarterly 34 (2012): 426–7.
123 Caroline Fehl, Growing up Rough: The Changing Politics of Justice at the International Criminal Court (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 2014), 6.
124 Gino J. Naldi and Konstantinos D. Magliveras, ‘The International Criminal Court and the African Union’, in The International Criminal Court and Africa, ed. C.C. Jalloh and I. Bantekas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 115 and 133.
125 Manisuli Ssenyonjo, ‘The International Criminal Court Arrest Warrant Decision for President Al Bashir of Sudan’, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 59 (2010): 209.
126 Carsten Stahn, A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 413.
127 Ilias Bantekas and Susan Nash, International Criminal Law (England: Routledge, 2007), 100.
128 Ibid.
129 Carsten Stahn, ‘ICTY and the New Law on Genocide’, in New Challenges to International Law, ed. Nijhoff Law Specials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 127.
130 International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling in the Bosnian Genocide Case (Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro), Judgment (merits), ICJ Reports 2007 (hereinafter ‘Bosnian Genocide Case’). https://www.icj-cij.org/case/91 (accessed September 29, 2023). See also Carolina Cwajg, ‘A Wild Goose Chase? Prosecuting Al Bashir at the ICC’, Rule of Law Journal 1 (2020): 8.
131 ICC, ‘How the Court Works’. https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/how-the-court-works (accessed April 4, 2022). See also Adrian Fulford, ‘Who Arrests those Accused by the ICC?’, American Journal of International Law (2018): 169.
132 ICC, ‘About the Court’. https://www.icc-cpi.int/about (accessed April 6, 2022).
133 United Nations (UN), ‘Sudan Striving for “Common Goal” of Peace, Prosperity, Freedom and Justice’, UN Affairs, September 25, 2021. https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1101272 (accessed April 9, 2022).
134 Maram Mahdi, ‘Why has Sudan Decided to Hand Over Al-Bashir to the ICC?’, Institute for Security Studies, September 21, 2021. https://issafrica.org/iss-today/why-has-sudan-decided-to-hand-over-al-bashir-to-the-icc (accessed April 7, 2022).
135 Mose, ‘Main Achievements of the ICTR’, 932.
136 Matthew Gillett, ‘The Call of Justice: Obligations under the Genocide Convention to Cooperate with the International Criminal Court’, Criminal Law Forum 23 (2012): 63–96.
137 Lansana Gberie, ‘The Special Court for Sierra Leone Rests – for Good’, April 2014. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2014/special-court-sierra-leone-rests-%E2%80%93-good (accessed September 30, 2023).
138 Co-Prosecutor v. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphân, Case no. 002/19-09-2007/ECCC/TC, November 16, 2018. https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/document/court/case-00202-judgement (accessed September 30, 2023).
139 Gillett, ‘The Call of Justice’.
140 Ibid.
141 Ibid.
142 The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (Decision Informing the UNSC and the Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute about Omar Al-Bashir’s Recent Visit to the Republic of Chad), ICC-02/05-01/09, August 27, 2010. https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-01/09-109 (accessed September 29, 2023). The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (Decision Informing the UNSC and the Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute about Omar Al-Bashir’s Presence in the Territory of the Republic of Kenya), ICC-02/05-01/09, August 27, 2010. https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-01/09-107 (accessed September 29, 2023). The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (Decision Informing the UNSC Council and the Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute about Omar Al-Bashir’s Recent Visit to Djibouti), ICC-02/05-01/09, May 12, 2011. https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-01/09-129 (accessed September 29, 2023). The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (Decision Pursuant to Article 87(7) of the Rome Statute on the Failure by the Republic of Malawi with the Cooperation Requests Issued by the Court with Respect to the Arrest and Surrender of Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir), ICC-02/05-01/09, December 12, 2011. https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-02/05-01/09-139-corr (accessed September 29, 2023). See also European Council of the European Union, ‘Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU on President Al-Bashir’s visits to Djibouti and Uganda’, July 9, 2018. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018/07/09/declaration-by-the-high-representative-on-behalf-of-the-eu-on-president-al-bashir-s-visits-to-djibouti-and-uganda/ (accessed September 29, 2023); Nuba Reports, ‘75 Trips to 22 Countries in 7 Years: An Indicted War Criminal’s Travels’, March 7, 2016. https://nubareports.org/bashir-travels/ (accessed September 30, 2023).
143 Bergsmo and Webb, ‘Some Lessons for the International Criminal Court’, 354; Philippe Currat and Brice Van Erps, ‘Founding an International Criminal Court Bar’, in The Past, Present and Future of the International Criminal Court, ed. A. Heinze and V.E. Dittrich (Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher, 2021), 608–9.
144 Priya Pillai, ‘Sudan, the International Criminal Court and Omar Al Bashir’, Opinio Juris, August 6, 2021. http://opiniojuris.org/2021/08/06/sudan-the-international-criminal-court-and-omar-al-bashir/ (accessed March 29, 2022).
145 Sluiter has contributed the foremost scholarly analysis about the legal obligation in this issue under the Genocide Convention. See Goran Sluiter, ‘Using the Genocide Convention to Strengthen Cooperation with the ICC in the Al-Bashir Case’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 8, no. 2 (2010): 365–82. For the scholarly contribution regarding the ICC’s role, see, for example, Sarah Williams and Lena Sherif, ‘The Arrest Warrant for President Al-Bashir: Immunities of Incumbent Heads of State and the International Criminal Court’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 14, (2009): 71–92; Steven Freeland, ‘A Prosecution Too Far? Reflections on the Accountability of Heads of State under International Criminal Law’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 41 (2010): 179.
146 Article IV of the Genocide Convention reads as follows:
Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.
147 Bosnian Genocide Case, para 43.
148 Ibid., para 443.
149 Ibid., para 445.
150 See generally Gillett, ‘The Call of Justice’.
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Mohammad Pizuar Hossain
Mohammad Pizuar Hossain is currently a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Department of Law of East West University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He provides pro bono professional support for the victims of human rights violations as a Consultant of the Bangladesh Office of Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR), Jakarta, Indonesia, and as a Legal Researcher of the Edinburgh International Justice Initiative (EIJI), Scotland, the United Kingdom. He also offers expert advice for various research projects undertaken by Digitally Right in Bangladesh. His research interests lie at the crossroads of international law, criminology, human rights, cybercrimes and cyber security, genocide studies and constitutional law. He has published articles in many journals, including Holocaust and Genocide Studies, International Annals of Criminology, International Journal of Human Rights, Commonwealth Law Bulletin, Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law, Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law, Australian Journal of Asian Law, and Asian Journal of Legal Studies.