To deter and dissuade, and so deny.

• Author: Bassiouni, Cherif
• Position: Use of international courts

The establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC), which has been in the making since the end of the First World War, is one of the United Nations most significant accomplishments. Before this development, the international community, between 1919 and 1994, established five ad hoc investigative commissions and four ad hoc tribunals. This approach, however, brought to justice only some of the perpetrators of the most heinous international crimes. What the world community needs is a permanent court that is independent, effective and fair.

The League of Nations in 1937 addressed the question of an international criminal court in the context of a convention against terrorism, but the treaty was only ratified by India and never entered into force. In 1947, the United Nations addressed this need through the work of the International Law Commission (ILC) and, in 1979, at the request of the Commission on Human Rights, I prepared a draft statute for an international criminal tribunal to prosecute persons responsible for the crime of apartheid. But it was not until 1994 that United Nations efforts began to bear fruit with an ILC draft statute that was well-received by the General Assembly. With the end of the "cold war" and the more recent tragedies of Cambodia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the world community looked forward to a new world order based on justice. A new era thus began for international criminal justice, which was strongly supported by international civil society.

In a historic achievement, a Rome-held Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998 adopted the Court's Statute and its Final Act. On 18 July, the "Treaty of Rome" was opened for signature.

The Court is established by a treaty binding only upon the ratifying States and only prospectively. Thus, its jurisdiction will not be retroactive; it is limited to three crimes: genocide; crimes against humanity; and war crimes. Aggression is also a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court, but owing to the States' inability to achieve consensus on the definition, its application is suspended until such time as it can be defined. The three core crimes, however, are well established, and their definitions in the Statute reflect existing law. They are also contained in the statutes of the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR).

States agreed on the formulation of the crime of genocide, which is the...