Whois & Analysis for icc-cpi.int

The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands.

The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer investigations to the Court.

The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force.

The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC's foundational and governing document.

States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC.

Currently, there are 124 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore members of the ICC.

However, Burundi has given formal notice that it will withdraw from the Rome Statute.

Crimes against humanity are certain acts that are deliberately committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack or individual attack directed against any civilian or an identifiable part of a civilian population.

The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place at the Nuremberg trials.

Crimes against humanity have since been prosecuted by other international courts – such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court, as well as in domestic prosecutions.

The law of crimes against humanity has primarily developed through the evolution of customary international law.

Crimes against humanity are not codified in an international convention, although there is currently an international effort to establish such a treaty, led by the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative.

A Crime of Aggression is a specific type of crime where a person plans, initiates, or executes an act of aggression using state military force that violates the Charter of the United Nations.

The act is judged as a violation on based on its character, gravity, and scale.

Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people (usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group) in whole or in part.

The hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word génos ("race, people") and the Latin suffix -cide ("act of killing").

The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

A war crime is an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility.

Examples of war crimes include intentionally killing civilians or prisoners, torture, destroying civilian property, taking hostages, perfidy, rape, using child soldiers, pillaging, declaring that no quarter will be given, and using weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.