{"id":250652,"date":"2023-12-18T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=250652"},"modified":"2023-12-16T09:50:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T09:50:14","slug":"is-the-icc-still-relevant-not-so-says-brazils-lula-da-silva-and-he-is-not-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/12\/is-the-icc-still-relevant-not-so-says-brazils-lula-da-silva-and-he-is-not-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the ICC Still Relevant? Not So, Says Brazil\u2019s Lula da Silva–and He Is Not Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

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14 Dec 2023<\/em> – On 4 Dec, Luis In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil (which has taken G20 presidency) said, after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, that he will invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 Summit that will take place in Brazil. Previously, Lula da Silva had stated Putin should not worry about being arrested<\/a>, should he visit Brazil, despite the county\u2019s membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Brazilian leader later withdrew this promise<\/a> but has maintained the invitation, thereby prompting a political controversy about the court in the Latin American country. On March 17, the Hague-based court issued a controversial arrest warrant<\/a> for both Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights (of Russia) and for Putin, a ruling that has been praised by US President Joe Biden, among others.<\/p>\n

Whenever people hear about the \u201cInternational Crime\u00a0 Court\u201d, they often assume it is some essential part of the fabric of international law. The court\u2019s name, however, should not be taken at face value. It is true that about 124 countries are ratified state parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. It is also true, though, that 30 others have not yet ratified it, some of which have no intention of doing so. China, Russia, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Turkey are not states parties – no Great Power in fact is a party to the ICC, unless one considers France, the UK and Germany as such. South Africa and the Philippines have already given formal notice of their intention to withdraw from the Statute, and so have Gambia and Burundi. Many other countries are considering doing so – which is not surprising at all.<\/p>\n

Consider this: having been formed in 2002, with the exception of the Putin\/Lvova-Belova warrant and the investigation on Rodrigo Duterte (former President of the Philippines), all other cases thus far launched by the court have been against Africans, including prominent regional leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. It is no wonder then that over the last years the African Union has often accused<\/a> the ICC of being biased<\/a> against the continent. William Schabas (professor of international law at Middlesex University) summarized<\/a> it: \u201cWhy prosecute post-election violence in Kenya\u2026 but not murder and torture of prisoners in Iraq or illegal settlements in the West Bank? Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and George W. Bush, the former American president\u2026 were never indicted by the ICC\u2026 in spite of the ample evidence available to justify legal proceedings against the two.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(Image by Ricardo Stuckert\/Presid\u00eancia da Rep\u00fablica)<\/p><\/div>\n

In September, Brazil\u2019s aforementioned President Lula da Silva had already questioned<\/a> the value of a Hague-based court that does not include the US, Russia, or China. In his reasoning, the ICC cannot be that relevant, considering the fact that major powers do not submit themselves to its jurisdiction. Similarly, Flavio Dino, then the Brazilian Minister of Justice, described the court as \u201cunbalanced\u201d, saying that \u201cit makes no sense to have a court that is only to judge some and not others\u201d, even adding that his country\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs could debate Brazil\u2019s participation<\/a> in the Statute.<\/p>\n

As shown, Lula da Silva is not the only who has doubts about the ICC and the controversies pertaining to the court have been around for a long time, way before its arrest warrant for Putin. Take the United States for instance. The US and the ICC have a peculiar record, to say the least. Back in 2002, President George W. Bush famously signed into law the so-called \u201cHague Invasion Act<\/a>\u201d, which in fact authorized the use of military force to liberate any American citizen being held by the ICC. More recently, it was described as a \u201ckangaroo court\u201d<\/a> by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when President Donal Trump authorized sanctions against an ICC investigation into US war crimes in Afghanistan<\/a>. Washington went so far as to threaten to arrest the court\u2019s judges<\/a> over the same issue.<\/p>\n

However, in 2022, S.Res.546<\/a>, a bipartisan, unanimous resolution by the US Senate (agreed to without amendment) came into being to support the ICC, which is quite remarkable, considering all the aforementioned record. It would seem the US is quite ready to applaud the Hague court, as long as it only persecutes its geopolitical rivals and never points its finger to any American war criminal – in this case Washington will literally threaten the court and its judges with arrest and invasion.<\/p>\n

The ICC is predominantly funded by European states. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Spain (and also Japan) have long been among the court\u2019s top 10 contributors<\/a>. Moreover, it also receives contributions from private donors, such as large corporations. All of that throws some doubts on its credibility and impartiality as an international organ often accused (justifiably so) of having a pro-Western bias.<\/p>\n

I wrote<\/a> before about the dangerous trend of employing international lawfare as a geopolitical tool – as seen in Germany, where local courts have been invoking \u201cuniversal jurisdiction\u201d (over some crimes) to convict Syrian authorities accused of having committed torture in Syria. This development was applauded by many, including Wolfgang Kaleck, founder of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), who described it as a step towards bigger\u00a0 things.<\/p>\n

One could very well ask how big it can get. We know that torture and sexual abuse were and have been common place in CIA-operated bases overseas as well as in places such as Guant\u00e1namo Bay (Cuba), and Abu Ghraib (Iraq). We also know Biden admittedly authorized the infamous August 29 drone strike in Kabul that killed civilians only. His predecessor Donald Trump in turn ordered the illegal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani<\/a>, who was on a peace mission. Even so, it is hard to imagine a top CIA official (or Biden and Trump themselves for that matter) being investigated by a German court – or by the ICC.<\/p>\n

From a perspective informed by legal realism and political realism, one could reason that the very way a country\u2019s judicial systems\u2019 \u201cuniversal jurisdiction\u201d can be exercised is limited by certain conditions regarding political, economic, and military power. The same limitations apply to the ICC. To sum it up, it is about geopolitics as much as it is about international law. The ICC today is a reflection of the inequalities between countries in today\u2019s architecture of international law.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – infobrics.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brazil\u2019s President Lula da Silva questioned the value of a court that does not include the US, Russia, or China. The ICC cannot be that relevant considering that major powers do not submit to its jurisdiction. The ICC is about geopolitics as much as it is about international law. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":250656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[2395,1134,124],"class_list":["post-250652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-lula-da-silva","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250657,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250652\/revisions\/250657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}