International Law Blog Postings

In an update to the earlier post on the Sudan, the UN Security Council voted 11-0 to refer the war crimes of Darfur in western Sudan to the International Criminal Court (ICC) located in The Hague in the Netherlands. The 15-member council adopted Resolution 1593 just before midnight on 31 March 2005, more than two months after the International Commission of Inquiry 176-page report called upon the Security Council to "immediately refer" the situation to the ICC (p.148). The referral to the Prosecutor of the ICC applies to war crimes committed in Darfur since the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 1 July 2002. This landmark decision represented the first time the Security Council voted to refer a case to the ICC and involved two controversial issues: the jurisdiction of the Court over a state not party to the Rome Statute and an immunity clause extended to states not party to the Rome Statute. Rather than veto the resolution, four countries abstained from the vote: Algeria, Brazil, China, and the United States. Continue Reading