Peace, Justice and the Ultimate Crime

This past week, the foreign ministers of African Union (AU) member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) publicly announced that they had decided to recommend withdrawal en masse from the court. Thirty-four of the African Union’s 54 member nations subscribe to the ICC under the provisions of the Rome Statute, the court’s founding charter. If leaders of the African States Parties to the Rome Statute all decide to accept the joint recommendation of their foreign ministers, it will be a major blow to the ICC, since their nations form the single largest regional group of countries subject to the jurisdiction of the court, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (27 States Parties), Western Europe and Others (25), and the Asian Group (19). Indeed, the Rome Statute does make provisions for withdrawal from the court’s jurisdiction. Article 27 provides that once a country formally notifies the United Nations of its decision to pull out, effective withdrawal from the ICC...

With members of the class and faculty at Harvard's  Kennedy School.  I'm in the front row left, standing.  Dr. Kathryn Sikkink  (seated just to  my right)  and  Dr. Luis Moreno Ocampo  (standing, front row,  4th from right).   It was my honor this past week to accept an invitation to visit Harvard University. More specifically, I visited Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School and its Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, both of which are teaching programs and doing research that coincide with areas of investigation included in my latest book, War: A Crime Against Humanity. These areas include ways to reform and improve the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC), as a means of making them more effective in establishing and maintaining world peace; strategies to bolster and protect the rule of law, democratic values, and human and civil rights; tactics for preventing torture and methods for imparting peace ed...