The International Effort to Criminalize War
September 20th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Debate about “crime of aggression” at conference of prosecutors from international tribunals.
The Real News — At the end of August prosecutors from international tribunals such as those in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and the Fmr. Yugoslavia met in Jamestown, NY for the 2010 International Humanitarian Law Dialogues. The discussion this year focused on the June review conference of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda. The conference has been long awaited since the establishment of the court in 1998. The main issue was the definition of the crime of aggression. Now defined, it awaits ratification, postponed to 2017. If the International Criminal Court is given jurisdiction to prosecute it, it would essentially make all acts of aggressive war (that is not self-defense) illegal. However, pressures from major military powers such as the US ensured the definition of the crime allowed for any state to opt out of it being used against them. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky spoke with Benjamin B. Ferencz who attended the Kampala conference in Jamestown and retired South African judge Richard Goldstone about the crime of aggression and the fight to include it into the International Criminal Court.
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