The court calls for cooperation with national governments
AMSTERDAM, 1 Jul. (DPA/EP) –
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has commemorated this Friday its 20th anniversary in The Hague with the immediate intention of investigating the crimes committed during the war in Ukraine and amid calls to increase cooperation with national governments after years of criticism of its exercise.
The chief prosecutor of the court, Karim Khan, has assured that the court is collaborating with the Ukrainian justice system in an attempt to present itself as the great legal figure of this conflict after years of criticism for its lack of effectiveness.
The ICC is responsible for judging crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression. The anniversary commemorates the entry into force, on July 1, 2002, of the treaty that serves as the legal basis, the Rome Statute, which has been signed by 123 countries.
Yet to this day major superpowers such as the United States, Russia or China do not recognize a court that has so far only delivered five guilty verdicts and several highly controversial not guilty verdicts.
The Prosecutor’s Office is currently investigating cases in 17 countries, most of them in Africa, whose authorities often accuse the court of exercising partisanship by pointing excessively at the continent. He has also investigated Afghanistan, Venezuela and Burma.
Khan has taken the opportunity to request collaboration from national governments. “We need to work with the affected communities that have lost so much to speed up and improve the quality and delivery of justice,” he said.
In June, the European Commission announced the launch of a project endowed with 7.25 million euros to support the ICC in its investigations, especially to improve its capacity to investigate war crimes committed by the Government of Vladimir Putin during the invasion of Ukraine.
The community funds will give specific support to the ICC Prosecutor’s office to improve its data collection capacity, have more data processing infrastructures and increase the means of analysis and forensics in the face of new types of evidence, for example digital evidence.
The ICC also deployed a team of 42 experts to Ukraine in May to examine on the ground possible evidence that war crimes or crimes against humanity have been committed as part of the military offensive.
Khan explained in a statement that this is an unprecedented deployment, with which his office is already working on a hypothetical prosecution against alleged perpetrators of international crimes, although this work is still in an initial phase.
The chief prosecutor of the ICC has already visited Ukraine twice since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the start of the military offensive in 2014. Among the places he has seen in person is the town of Bucha, located in the immediate vicinity of kyiv and a symbol of the alleged massacre of civilians by Russian troops.