In this episode, Paola Gaeta, Director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and Roger O’Keefe, Professor of International Law, Bocconi University, join Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb to discuss recent developments at the International Criminal Court.
The Court has now issued arrest warrants, or arrest warrants have been sought by the Prosecutor, for several serving heads of state or government of states that are not parties to the ICC Statute. Both states parties and non-states parties are now reacting to these warrants, with varying degrees of support or condemnation. The hosts and their guests discuss these developments, focusing on the Court’s jurisprudence on whether high-ranking officials of non-states parties can benefit from immunities that they are otherwise entitled to under general international law.
Note: this episode was recorded last Friday, before the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Because Syria is not a state party, in the absence of a Security Council referral, the ICC lacks jurisdiction over crimes against international law committed there, unless they are committed by a national of a state party. As Assad is no longer the Syrian head of state, he would in any event not benefit from head of state immunity under customary international law. A French court has, however, issued an arrest warrant for Assad while he was the sitting head of state.
For more background on these issues, readers might be interested in this recent post by Keiichiro Kawai on the ICC PTC Mongolia decision; this older post by Dapo on the Bashir decision (with a fascinating discussion in the comments, including an appearance of the Court’s official spokesperson); and these academic articles by Paola, Roger, and Claus Kress.
