The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court that prosecutes individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The ICC was established by the 1998 multilateral Rome Statue that entered into force in 2002.

Jurisdiction

In non-member states

The court has jurisdiction over non-party nationals (e.g. Russians) that commit a crime in a member-state or a state accepting ICC jurisdiction (e.g. Ukraine). This remains true, even if the non-party nationals remain in their country, as long as the consequence of their crime is inside the ICC’s jurisdiction (called the principle of “objective territoriality”). A few examples:

• If a Russian fires a drone from Russia at a hospital in Ukraine, the ICC has jurisdiction.
• If US congressmen threaten the ICC in a letter to the ICC (in the member-state Netherlands), the ICC has jurisdiction.

Complementarity

The preamble of the Rome Statute states that the ICC “shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions”. This does not mean - as is often claimed - that the ICC has no jurisdiction if there exists an independent legal system in the countries involved. The mere existence of a legal system is not enough.

What it means is explained in Art. 17, which is squarely about whether the case is being or has been actively investigated in the national legal system. The two criteria are: There needs to be activity in a national investigation regarding the same person.

So, e.g.

• claims made that the ICC has no jurisdiction over crimes committed by Israelis in the Gaza strip are void, so long as there is no active, credible investigation against PM Netanyahu and Defence Minister Gallant.