ICC Entered into Force from Today Not Including USA, China and Russia

▽ICC 〓 The International Criminal Court (ICC) will be a permanent court for trying individuals accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Started from Nuremberg court and Tokyo court since the World War 2, the Yugoslavian court was established prior to ICC. However, all of them are temporary organizations.

On 1 July 2002, International Criminal Court (ICC) will enter into force with 60 ratifications necessary for entry into force of the Rome Statute. In 1998, 68 countries ratified the Rome statute. ICC will be established in Hague, Netherlands where the Yugoslavian court was located. Currently, the bidding of the building design is in progress for complete establishment in 2007.

There shall be 18 judges with a term of 9 years of the Court. The court will start the active operation in the early of the next year. To discuss the budget allotment, administrative system and designation of judges, the meeting will be hold in September in Hague, Netherlands. Advisory committee will be organized soon.

To prevent the making of ‘sovereignty infringement, ICC starts the legal procedure only when the country of a prosecutor rejects a punishment or cannot make any punishment. However, ICC has a jurisdiction when the crime occurs in ICC countries even the country of the prosecutor doesn’t register at ICC.

▽Open question〓 USA unsigned the Rome Statute. Accordingly, ICC has the assignment to solve a trouble with US. USA demanded the privilege of exemption from liability for USA Peace-Keeping Forces from ICC because US nations such as Peach-keeping forces may be the criminal suspect for the political purpose. If ICC doesn’t accept the demand, USA has frightened ICC announcing that USA will be able to cut the allotment of 23% out of budgets of peach-keeping forces and withdrawing the forces. However, with all 15 countries that support the ICC, EU rejected the USA demand saying, “It defames the spirit of ICC”. EU says that there is no exception for USA.

USA, Russia, China and the Arab states are against ICC and didn’t participate to ICC. China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq and Turkey didn’t sign the Rome Statute prescribing the ICC establishment. Egypt, Iran, Russia and Israel didn’t ratify the Rome Statute. Korea and Japan didn’t ratify the Rome Statute. Such as USA and Japan, the major financial countries didn’t ratify it and so ICC has the unstable finance.

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