International Criminal Court

David Kaye warns in his June 1 Op-Ed article that bringing the crime of aggression within its ambit may erode support for the International Criminal Court. It is true that the ICC has done an admirable job in the years since its founding in holding trials for those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Without the ICC, these individuals, accused of the most heinous mass crimes, might not ever face justice and punishment. The ICC is an institution that our nation's founders would have recognized.

Nobody ever made a viral video about Thomas Lubanga. Unlike Joseph Kony, a similarly despicable African warlord who also recruited child soldiers to carry out a campaign of rape, murder and mutilation and is now the subject of the fastest-spreading video in Internet history, Lubanga's dirty work went largely unnoticed in the West. Also unlike the still-at-large Kony, Lubanga is about to face justice for his crimes. Lubanga, the head of a rebel militia that fought a devastating ethnic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Wednesday had the distinction of being the first person convicted by the International Criminal Court, a decade-old institution that has been in equal measures an inspiration and a disappointment for human rights advocates.

Imagine a global court with the power to prosecute political and military officials who lead their countries into aggressive wars. The post- World War II tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo tried senior German and Japanese leaders for their egregious crimes of aggression; why not have a similar forum for the heirs of Hitler, Tojo and their like? If dozens of governments have their way, the world may soon have just such a court. The 111 governments that are parties to the International Criminal Court — the permanent court at The Hague that now has the power to try cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes — are meeting this week in Kampala, Uganda, to take stock of the court's progress in the 12 years since its charter was adopted in Rome in 1998.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague on Wednesday found former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga guilty of using children as soldiers, the first verdict in the panel's 10-year history. He could face life imprisonment. After a three-year trial, the court convicted Lubanga of recruiting boys and girls younger than 15 as soldiers during a civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 and 2003. Although his militia was accused of massacres, rapes, torture and ethnic killings by human rights activists and witnesses, the court charged him only with the recruitment and use of children to fight.

In a move that could inject a new international actor into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the International Criminal Court will examine requests to investigate alleged war crimes during the recent combat in the Gaza Strip, its chief prosecutor said Wednesday. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the Netherlands-based court, said he had decided to consider an investigation after the Palestinian Authority accepted the jurisdiction of the court last week.

The Nuremberg trials at the close of World War II were controversial in their day. Advocates saw civilized nations imposing just retribution for acts of depravity; critics saw an exercise of victors' justice, with rules of warfare imposed after the fact. From that divisive history emerged a movement to create a permanent international court in which charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity could be heard -- and a long debate over the wisdom of the idea.

If there were an international court with the power to prosecute crimes of aggression, we might be able to haul North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il before it to answer for his country's sinking of a South Korean warship in March. We could nail Russian leaders for their invasion of Georgia in 2008, and maybe even throw the book at the Argentines who sparked the Falklands War in 1982. World peace could be enforced with the tapping of a gavel rather than the pounding of artillery. It's an inspiring goal.

"There are probably more people engaged in civil disobedience now than during the Vietnam War, and most of them are engaged for religious reasons," Prof. Richard Falk of Princeton's Center for International Studies told the 200 people assembled at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. Finally , the stirring in the room indicated, people were getting something to fire them up.

The arrest warrant issued last week for Sudan President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir has thrown into stark relief a question the Obama administration and Congress need to address: What are we going to do about the International Criminal Court? The desire for a permanent criminal court to try individuals accused of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide has been around since the Nuremberg trials.

Memo to the new leaders of Libya: If you're trying to establish a democratic, internationally recognized state founded on the rule of law, it's a very bad idea to seek governance advice from the modern successor to Idi Amin. In one of the more incongruous diplomatic visits in recent memory, Libyan officials over the weekend rolled out the red carpet for none other than Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir — the dictator next door wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for slaughtering his own people, very like the military dictator just overthrown in Libya who was also wanted by the ICC on similar charges.

Memo to the new leaders of Libya: If you're trying to establish a democratic, internationally recognized state founded on the rule of law, it's a very bad idea to seek governance advice from the modern successor to Idi Amin. In one of the more incongruous diplomatic visits in recent memory, Libyan officials over the weekend rolled out the red carpet for none other than Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir — the dictator next door wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for slaughtering his own people, very like the military dictator just overthrown in Libya who was also wanted by the ICC on similar charges.

The United Nations' top human rights forum on Friday condemned Syria for "gross and systematic violations" after an independent panel found evidence suggesting the country's security forces had committed crimes against humanity. The resolution approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva adds to pressure on President Bashar Assad's increasingly isolated government, which has faced multiple rounds of sanctions for its violent crackdown on an 8-month-old uprising. Diplomats said it was also a call to action by the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly and the International Criminal Court, although there was no direct mention of those bodies in the approved version of the text.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo has more than a billion clients. He is the first prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, whose authority to prosecute those who commit crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide is acknowledged by more than 110 nations. (But not the United States -- the U.S. signed the treaty, and then "unsigned" it.) Before he joined the ICC, he was famous for prosecuting politicians and generals for mass murder in his native Argentina. With his nine-year ICC term nearly finished, the first of the international cases he's filed -- against Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga -- still awaits a verdict.

A group of mercenaries has offered to help Moammar Kadafi's fugitive son and onetime heir apparent evade arrest and trial, an international prosecutor said Friday. The International Criminal Court warned that authorities might intercept any aircraft linked to the suspected plot to shield Seif Islam Kadafi from facing war crimes charges pending against him. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo also said his office had had "informal contact" with the younger Kadafi, once regarded as the reformist face of his father's regime in Libya.

Moammar Kadafi is a fitting target for the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court. Whatever one's opinion of the court — and The Times' editorial board has been divided on the subject — the charges lodged against the Libyan strongman and two relatives dramatize the worldwide condemnation of Kadafi's war against his own people. He is now formally what he has been in fact since the Arab Spring came to Libya: an outlaw. The grounds for the warrant, according to the court, are that Kadafi allegedly committed crimes against humanity — specifically murder and persecution.

The international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity issued against Moammar Kadafi and members of his family has further isolated the Libyan leader, but may also increase his determination to fight on rather than relinquish power or seek sanctuary outside the country. With the military standoff between NATO-led and pro-Kadafi forces surpassing 100 days, the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Monday named Kadafi, his son and brother-in-law as wanted men. The court alleged that the leaders ordered or encouraged their forces to gun down and imprison hundreds of Libyan civilians in the early days of the antigovernment uprising that broke out in February.

Nobody ever made a viral video about Thomas Lubanga. Unlike Joseph Kony, a similarly despicable African warlord who also recruited child soldiers to carry out a campaign of rape, murder and mutilation and is now the subject of the fastest-spreading video in Internet history, Lubanga's dirty work went largely unnoticed in the West. Also unlike the still-at-large Kony, Lubanga is about to face justice for his crimes. Lubanga, the head of a rebel militia that fought a devastating ethnic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Wednesday had the distinction of being the first person convicted by the International Criminal Court, a decade-old institution that has been in equal measures an inspiration and a disappointment for human rights advocates.

The Security Council on Thursday grudgingly approved another one-year exemption for U.S. peacekeepers from prosecution by the newly established International Criminal Court, despite objections from some members that it puts the U.S. outside international law. Washington had pushed hard for the exemption, saying that its personnel were particularly vulnerable to politically motivated charges, and that it would not participate in peacekeeping operations without immunity.

With questions growing about NATO's air war and international arrest warrants threatening to close off a diplomatic solution, new players are joining the search for a way out of the Libya conflict. But the efforts have stumbled so far on Moammar Kadafi's insistence that he remain in the country. Russia and Turkey have recently added their voices to Western demands that Kadafi leave. Libyan officials long have declared that a nonstarter, and diplomats say it is unlikely they can change Kadafi's mind.

I recently returned from a week in Iraq, where I trained an elite security force unit on human rights and the law of combat operations. Discussions regarding the responsibility of commanders for the acts of their forces migrated to the issue of the United Nations' International Criminal Court. One Iraqi officer asked me, "If the United States believes in accountability over impunity, why are you not a party to the International Criminal Court?" I did not have a satisfactory answer. The answer for public consumption is that U.S. accession to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, is not an imminent issue because U.S. processes for achieving accountability function well: The military and civilian courts are open, the government already is bringing cases to court where the evidence warrants, and convictions are occurring on a sufficiently regular basis.