International Criminal Court

Not to be confused with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), an organ of the United Nations that hears disputes between states.

International Criminal Court   (IGO)
Abbreviation	ICC
Formation	1 July 2002
Headquarters	The Hague, Netherlands
Type	•  legal •  international
Interest of	John Bellinger
Membership	•   Afghanistan •   Albania •   Andorra •   Antigua and Barbuda •   Argentina •   Australia •   Austria •   Bangladesh •  Barbados •   Belgium •   Belize •   Benin •   Bolivia •   Bosnia and Herzegovina •   Botswana •   Brazil •   Bulgaria •   Burkina Faso •   Cambodia •   Canada •   Cape Verde •   Central African Republic •  Chad •   Chile •   Colombia •   Comoros •   Democratic Republic of the Congo •   Republic of the Congo •   Cook Islands •   Costa Rica •   Côte d'Ivoire •   Croatia •   Cyprus •   Czech Republic •   Denmark •   Djibouti •   Dominica •   Dominican Republic •   East Timor •   Ecuador •   El Salvador •   Estonia •   Fiji •   Finland •   France •   Gabon •  Gambia •   Georgia •   Germany •   Ghana •   Greece •   Grenada •   Guatemala •   Guinea •   Guyana •   Honduras •   Hungary •   Iceland •  Ireland •   Italy •   Japan •   Jordan •   Kiribati •   Kenya •   Latvia •   Lesotho •   Liberia •   Liechtenstein •   Lithuania •   Luxembourg •   Madagascar •   Malawi •   Maldives •   Mali •   Malta •   Marshall Islands •   Mauritius •   Mexico •   Moldova •   Mongolia • File:Europe-Montenegro.svg  Montenegro •   Namibia •   Nauru •   Netherlands •   New Zealand •   Niger •   Nigeria •   North Macedonia •   Norway •   Palestine •   Panama •   Paraguay •   Peru •   Poland •   Portugal •   Romania •   Saint Kitts and Nevis •   Saint Lucia •   Saint Vincent and the Grenadines •   Samoa •   San Marino •   Senegal •   Serbia •   Seychelles •   Sierra Leone •   Slovakia •   Slovenia •   South Africa •  South Korea •   Spain •   Suriname •   Sweden •   Switzerland •   Tanzania •   Tajikistan •  Trinidad and Tobago •   Tunisia •   Uganda •   United Kingdom •   Uruguay •   Vanuatu •   Venezuela •   Zambia
An international tribunal to prosecute individuals for war crimes.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

Official Narrative

The ICC seeks to investigate and prosecute those responsible for grave offenses such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Criticism

For years the ICC served exclusively as an instrument of the West against unpopular politicians from the Global South. As it initially only indicted African politicians, it was derided on the continent as the "Africa Court". Tony Cartalucci wrote in 2019 that the ICC is:

• "neither international nor a legitimate court, but is most certainly criminal"
• "It is an institutionalised tool – one of many – used by Western corporate-financier interests to coerce and control nations across the developing world."

Wikipedia Criticism

Not normal for Wikipedia, the court already has a own page full of faults with the court. Some governments have refused to recognize the court's assertion of jurisdiction, with other civil groups also accusing the court of bias, focusing too much on Europe and racism. Others have also questioned the effectiveness of the court outright. A big vocal opponent of the court is the US.

Membership

Map of the world with parties to the International Criminal Court

  International Criminal Court members

  Signed but not ratified and have accepted the court's jurisdiction

  Signed but not ratified

  Neither signed nor acceded

China, Russia, the United States and others have not moved under it's jurisdiction.

Israeli war crimes

On 15 November 2023, South Africa filed a referral to the International Criminal Court for an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. During a state visit to Qatar, President Cyril Ramaphosa said his country believes Israel is committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have been killed and hospitals and public infrastructure have been destroyed:

“As South Africa we have accordingly, together with many other countries across the world, referred this whole Israeli government action to the International Criminal Court.

“We have put through a referral because we believe that war crimes are being committed there. And of course we do not condone the actions that were taken by Hamas earlier, but similarly we condemn the actions that are currently underway and believe that they warrant an investigation by the ICC.”

Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress party said it would support the motion tabled by the leftist opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters for the country to shut down the Israeli Embassy and cut diplomatic ties with the country.

Surveillance and intimidation

The Mossad ran a years long surveillance and intimidation campaign against the ICC and it's prosecutors to end the effort of their war crimes investigation against Israel.

Arrest warrants issued

On 21 November 2024, the pre-trial Chamber I of the ICC issued warrants of arrest for two individuals: Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant

Israel's alleged war criminals wanted for trial

The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant each bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts; and for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.

Putin arrest warrant

On 17 March 2023, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, introduced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Llova-Belova. The warrant, which accused Putin and Lolva-Belova of conducting the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” across the Russian Federation, inspired a wave of incendiary commentary in the West.

US Senator Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most aggressive cheerleader in the US Congress for war with Russia, proclaimed:

“The ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin because he has organised the kidnapping of at least 16,000 Ukrainian children from their families and sent them to Russia. It is exactly what Hitler did in World War II.”

The ICC prosecutor Karim Khan appeared to have based his arrest warrant on research produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL). Yale HRL’s work was funded and guided by the US State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilisation Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.

During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Yale HRL’s executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, claimed his report provided proof that “thousands of children are in a hostage situation.” Invoking the Holocaust, Raymond asserted, “We are dealing with the largest network of children camps seen in the 21st century.” Yet in an interview with Jeremy Loffredo, the co-author of this report, and in his own paper for Yale HRL, Raymond contradicted many of the bombastic claims he made to the media about child hostages. During a phone conversation with Loffredo, Raymond acknowledged that “a large amount” of the camps his team investigated were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.”

Yale HRL’s report similarly acknowledges that most of the camps it profiled provided free recreational programs for disadvantaged youth whose parents sought “to protect their children from ongoing fighting” and “ensure they had nutritious food of the sort unavailable where they live.” Nearly all of the campers returned home in a timely manner after attending with the consent of their parents, according to the paper. The State Department-funded report further concedes that it found “no documentation of child mistreatment.” Yale HRL based its research entirely on Maxar satellite data, Telegram postings, and Russian media reports, relying on Google translate to interpret them and at times misrepresented the articles in its citations. The State Department-funded unit conceded that it performed no field research for its paper, stating that it “does not conduct ground-level investigations and therefore did not request access to the camps.”

Unlike the Yale investigators who inspired the ICC’s arrest warrant, Loffredo gained unfettered access to a Russian government camp in Moscow that houses youth from the war-torn Donbas region. Though it is precisely the kind of centre that Yale HRL – and by extension, the ICC – have portrayed as a “re-education camp” for Ukrainian child hostages, he found a hotel full of happy campers receiving free classical music lessons in their native Russian language from first-class instructors – a “teddy bear,” as Raymond called it. At The Donbas Express music camp located just outside Moscow, youth told Loffredo they were grateful to have found refuge from the Ukrainian army’s years-long campaign of shelling and besiegement of their homeland. By fleeing the war in Donbas, these children had escaped a nightmarish military conflict for which Yale HRL and the ICC have demonstrated little or no concern.

NATO Impunity

The court echoes a wider culture of impunity for NATO members, so, for example, Radovan Karadžić was jailed for 40 years as a war criminal, but George W. Bush and Tony Blair have not even been charged for committing a war of aggression which is widely understood to have been illegal and which even a UK Deputy Prime Minister termed as such.

Videos

Why the US Hates the International Criminal Court

Why the U.S. and Russia Get Away With War Crimes

 

Known members

121 of the 122 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Afghanistan	"The graveyard of empires" - Afghanistan has a reputation for undoing ambitious military ventures and humiliating would-be aggressors.
Albania	A small country in Southeastern Europe.
Andorra	A micro state in Europe. An enclave between France and Spain.
Antigua and Barbuda	Small island nation in the Caribbean Sea, formerly part of the British Empire.
Argentina	Second biggest country in South America.
Australia	A large island nation in the southern hemisphere which is pioneering universal surveillance of its citizenry.
Austria	German-speaking republic in Central Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, Austria has become increasingly westernised.
Bangladesh	8th most populated country in the world. Formerly part of the British Empire.
Barbados	Scenic Caribbean island nation. Formerly part of the British Empire
Belgium	Former European colonial power
Belize	The only Central American country which is a Commonwealth realm.
Benin	French speaking country in West Africa.
Bolivia	Mountainous country in South America, a large producer of cocaine. Formerly part of the Spanish Empire.
Bosnia and Herzegovina	small nation in the Balkans.
Botswana	Country in Southern Africa. Formerly part of the British Empire, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world.
Brazil	Very large and not particularly populous country which has made a priority of biofuels.
Bulgaria	The poorest country in the European Union.
Burkina Faso	African country; formely part of the French Empire.
Cambodia	A Buddhist nation in Indochina.
Canada	If tar sands are counted, Canada possesses the 3rd largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Cape Verde	African island nation. Independence from Portugal in 1975.
Central African Republic	Unstable, poor African country. They speak Sango and French in the CAR.
Chad	Arabic and French speaking desert nation in North Africa. Formerly part of the French Empire, Chad has seen instability in recent years.
Chile	Spanish-speaking MEDC in South America. It occupies a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
Colombia	Colombia is an important state in the trafficking of cocaine to North America.
Comoros	Obscure island nation off the east coast of Africa. A nation formed at a crossroads of different civilisations, The Comoros is noted for its diverse culture.
Costa Rica	An armyless country between Nicaragua and Panama
Croatia	Formerly part of Yugoslavia, Croatia is westernising at a rapid rate, with membership of the European Union and NATO being achieved relatively quickly after independence.
Cyprus	A small, divided, island in the Mediterranean. Greek Cyrpus was aggressively pushing the COVID-19/Vaccine in May 2021.
Czech Republic	Formerly communist, central European nation.
Côte d'Ivoire	The Ivory Coast.
Democratic Republic of the Congo	A large country in central Africa, the majority of the former 'Belgian Congo'.
Denmark	Member of the EU, NATO.
Djibouti	small country in East Africa.
Dominican Republic	Caribbean country; shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
East Timor	An island country in Southeast Asia.
Ecuador	Offered asylum to Julian Assange.
Eire	Island off the coast of Great Britain. Ireland is a member of the EU but not NATO.
El Salvador	A small Spanish-speaking nation state in Central America. Brutal CIA proxy war in the 1980s
Estonia	Estonia is the most northern of the Baltic States. Formerly part of the USSR, now EU and NATO.
Fiji	One of the world's first nation states to mandate Covid vaccination for certain adults.
Finland	Nordic country, borders Russia.
France	A European nation, former colonial power, permanent seat on the UNSC
Gabon	French speaking country on the west coast of Africa.
Gambia	The smallest country in mainland Africa.
Georgia	A former part of the USSR.
Germany	"The economic powerhouse of Europe" - Germany dominates the European Union.
Ghana	Formerly known as the "Gold Coast", Ghana has one of the most stable governments in Africa. A member of the African Union and the Commonwealth of Nations
Greece	"In 2006... the third biggest arms importer after China and India."
Grenada	A Caribbean island, that had a coup in the 1980s.
... further results

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Canada Rejects Petition to Lift All Sanctions on Venezuela	Article	9 November 2018	Nino Pagliccia	While Canada chooses to speak of the “dire human rights and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela” – where there is none – it ignores, condones and rather endorses Saudi Arabia in the making of one of the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen. That is the most vicious double standard that a “democratic” country can demonstrate.
Document:Condemnation of mass killings in Gaza	Article	15 May 2018	Hans Köchler	"The deliberate targeting of civilians by the Israeli army – inside the territory of Gaza – constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity. Those responsible must be brought to justice – in conformity with the Statute and on the basis of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of which Palestine is a State Party."
Document:ICC prosecutor says world leaders 'threatened' him over Israel arrest warrants	Article	5 September 2024	News Desk	“Target Israel, and we will target you,” US Senators, led by Tom Cotton, warned in the letter. “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” Senators Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio also signed the letter.
Document:If War Is an Industry, How Can There Be Peace in a Capitalist World?	Wikispooks Page		Vijay Prashad
Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:Open Letter To The Judges Of The International Criminal Court	Letter	7 October 2024	Yanis Varoufakis Brian Eno
Document:Raqqa: A City Laid Waste, The Law Laid Low	Article	2 November 2018	Christopher Black	In June 2017, the US-led coalition - including France and the UK - launched a military operation to force the Islamic State armed group from Raqqa. But instead of only targeting IS, we killed hundreds and injured thousands of civilians, while obliterating much of the city.
Document:To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war	Article	31 May 2024	Jonathan Cook	Now, as Netanyahu and Gallant risk being put in the dock at The Hague, Washington is finally finding its resolve to act. Not to stop genocide. But to offer Israel protection to carry on.
Document:Watch the West continue to make a mockery of international law	blog post	19 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	The World Court concludes that the Palestinians are owed massive reparations. At a bare minimum, western governments must recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories.

 

A document sourced from International Criminal Court

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:ICC issues warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant	Statement	Benjamin Netanyahu Yoav Gallant Crimes against humanity War crime International humanitarian law Gaza Palestine East Jerusalem	21 November 2024	Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC	The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant each bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts; and for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.

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