The evolution of funding for the International Criminal Court: Budgets, donors and gender justice

Abstract

In this article, we introduce a new dataset on financial support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and examine how this support has changed over its two decades of existence. We first consider how the ICC’s overall budget has changed over time. Then, we explore the evolution of support from individual donor governments. In addition, given former Prosecutor Bensouda’s emphasis on the effective investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes, we examine the extent to which ICC funding is consistent with its apparent commitment to gender justice. Our research contributes to debates about the cost of justice, donors and norm diffusion, South–North clashes over the definition and delivery of justice, and gender mainstreaming within costly international justice processes. We argue that the level of funding state parties and other bodies allocate to particular forms of justice is a better proxy for their commitment to justice than their rhetoric, and conclude that the patterns of funding seen at the ICC support the claim that the Court remains, to a significant extent, a tool of powerful states.

Acknowledgments

This publication is based on activities and or/research supported by the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. The authors thank Cameron Russell and Claire Wilmot for valuable research assistance on this article. Thank you to Michael Broache, Courtney Hillebrecht, and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Data are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/JE8SKW.

2 The budgeting process within the ICC is still, to a large extent, a black box. Given that the overall budget is relatively fixed, there is intra-institutional competition for resources; for instance, a greater demand from the Registry will need to be compensated for elsewhere. The principals of the Court (its president, prosecutor, and registrar) claim in the “Proposed Programme Budget for 2023 of the International Criminal Court: to work together to streamline the Court’s budget, although this process needs further research.

3 The Coalition for the ICC is particularly active around budget issues, advocating that the Court deliver rigorous, disciplined budgets and that state parties fund the ICC sufficiently to deliver meaningful justice.

4 The initiative was introduced by Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

5 Official Records, Fifteenth session, 2016 (ICC-ASP/15/20), vol. I, part III, ICC-ASP/15/Res.1, Section L, para. 1.

6 Official Records, Fifteenth session, 2016 (ICC-ASP/15/20), vol. I, part III, ICC-ASP/15/Res.1, Section L, para. 2.

7 Official Records, Eighteenth session, 2019 (ICC-ASP/18/20), vol. I, part III, ICC-ASP/18/Res.1, Section K, para. 6.

8 Proposed Programme Budget for 2018 of the International Criminal Court Budget, Annex X, para. 5. Accessed at https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP16/ICC-ASP-16-10-ENG.pdf.

9 At the same time, it must be noted that the statute’s definition of gender is inherently conservative: “the term ‘gender’ refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society,” Article 7(3).

10 https://www.icc-cpi.int/uganda/ongwen.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm

Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, PhD in political science, is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His work focuses on human rights, transitional justice, and peace and conflict studies. E-mail: [email protected]; Twitter: @wiebelhausbrahm.

Kirsten Ainley

Kirsten Ainley is Associate Professor of International Relations and the Co-Principal Investigator of the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Her research focuses on international policy and practice in military, legal and development-focused interventions, and the impacts of these interventions. E-mail: [email protected]; Twitter: @kirstenainley.