A Compromise on Trials for Crimes of Aggression
21 June 2010
Photo: AP
Lawyer Karim Khan, left, at the International Criminal Court last week, defending Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain. He has voluntarily surrendered to face war crimes charges in a deadly 2007 attack against African Union peacekeepers in Darfur.
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
Member countries of the International Criminal Court met this month in Kampala, Uganda. They were there to examine the court's progress for the first time. Observers, human rights activists and civil society groups also attended the two-week review conference.
A treaty called the Rome Statute established the court in The Hague, in the Netherlands, in two thousand two. The court can try people for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity when their own countries are unwilling or unable to.
The court was also given the right to try crimes of aggression, although it never has. This is partly because I.C.C. members could not agree on how to define aggression.
In Kampala they agreed on a compromise resolution. It defines the crime in terms of acts by a political or military leader against another state in violation of the United Nations Charter.
Invasions, attacks and blockades could all be tried as acts of aggression. So could letting another country use a state's territory for aggressive acts against a third state.
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