The ICC

The question of needing the International Criminal Court has been debated for many years now. Recently, with the Russo-Ukrainian war currently taking place, the ICC has been in the news a fair amount. Political figures and commentators have predicted Vladimir Putin should/will be held accountable for the invasion of Ukraine at the ICC if defeated. The likelihood of this actually happening is extremely low, but the idea that it could happen is exactly why we need an international court system. Any given leader of any given country should not feel above the law in any way. When the world's most powerful leaders know that their actions will have consequences and they realize they will be held accountable, the world will ultimately be a safer place. The problem is that the ICC has not achieved this whatsoever. The ICC is extremely disorganized and not an actual threat to leaders of major world powers. The first problem is that the ICC has no authority or jurisdiction when it comes to America. In order for this system of a higher global court holding leaders accountable everyone must buy in. Since America is not involved, other world powers like China and Israel are not involved either.  This causes a power imbalance as well as poor organization and funding. Therefore ICC is not a good deterrent and a lot of money that could go into helping developing nations infrastructure, health care, food and water supply, etc is going to waste. The second problem with the ICC is that the court itself is run ineffectively. The panel that decides the fate of very important leaders is sometimes only made up of just three judges and in this instance only a two thirds majority was needed for a conviction.  When it comes to an international court making global decisions there should at least be a bigger panel of judges. I believe there should be an international criminal court, however the ICC needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Although it is extremely challenging to create an impartial justice system and even harder to achieve this on an international scale, it is worth it to hold dictators accountable. There are many different cultures around the world that have a variety of values, however a basic global standard of right and wrong needs to be set to ensure safety and security of all people. I believe the international criminal court can set this standard which is why we should  keep it in place and make it better. 


Comments

  1. IngridMarch 29, 2022 at 12:18 PM

    I appreciate your explanation of the problems with the ICC because although we do need it as a global system, it currently has many problems that are doing more harm than good. I am glad you touched on the imbalance of power and its correlation to states not taking accountability, as well as the extreme budget that is essentially wasted because ICC cases often do not result in justice because to me those are the top two problems with the system.

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