International court approves Afghanistan investigation

Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court gave the green light Thursday for prosecutors to open an investigation targeting the Taliban, Afghan forces and U.S. military and intelligence personnel for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The global court upheld an appeal by prosecutors against a pretrial chamber’s rejection in April last year of Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s request to open a probe in Afghanistan.

 ICC

• The International Criminal Court (ICC), located in The Hague, is the court of last resort for prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
• It is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
• Its founding treaty, the Rome Statute, entered into force on July 1, 2002.
• Although the Court’s expenses are funded primarily by States Parties, it also receives voluntary contributions from governments, international organisations, individuals, corporations and other entities.

Criticism

• It does not have the capacity to arrest suspects and depends on member states for their cooperation.
• Critics of the Court argue that there are insufficient checks and balances on the authority of the ICC prosecutor and judges and insufficient protection against politicized prosecutions or other abuses.
• The ICC has been accused of bias and as being a tool of Western imperialism, only punishing leaders from small, weak states while ignoring crimes committed by richer and more powerful states.
• ICC cannot mount successful cases without state cooperation is problematic for several reasons.
• It means that the ICC acts inconsistently in its selection of cases, is prevented from taking on hard cases and loses legitimacy.
• It also gives the ICC less deterrent value, as potential perpetrators of war crimes know that they can avoid ICC judgment by taking over government and refusing to cooperate.

PAPER-II