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The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The ICC is distinct from the International Court of Justice, an organ of the United Nations that hears disputes between states. Established in 2002 pursuant to the multilateral Rome Statute, the ICC is considered by its proponents to be a major step toward justice, and an innovation in international law and human rights.

The Court has faced a number of criticisms. Some governments have refused to recognize the court’s assertion of jurisdiction, with other civil groups also accusing the court of bias, Eurocentrism and racism. Others have also questioned the effectiveness of the court as a means of upholding international law.

The establishment of an international tribunal to judge political leaders accused of international crimes was first proposed during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 following the First World War by the Commission of Responsibilities. The issue was addressed again at a conference held in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations in 1937, which resulted in the conclusion of the first convention stipulating the establishment of a permanent international court to try acts of international terrorism. The convention was signed by 13 states, but none ratified it and the convention never entered into force.

Following the Second World War, the allied powers established two ad hoc tribunals to prosecute Axis leaders accused of war crimes. The International Military Tribunal, which sat in Nuremberg, prosecuted German leaders while the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo prosecuted Japanese leaders. In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly first recognized the need for a permanent international court to deal with atrocities of the kind prosecuted after World War II. At the request of the General Assembly, the International Law Commission (ILC) drafted two statutes by the early 1950’s but these were shelved during the Cold War, which made the establishment of an international criminal court politically unrealistic.

Benjamin B. Ferencz, an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen trial, became a vocal advocate of the establishment of international rule of law and of an international criminal court. In his book Defining International Aggression: The Search for World Peace (1975), he advocated for the establishment of such a court. Another leading proponent was Robert Kurt Woetzel, a German-born professor of international law, who co-edited Toward a Feasible International Criminal Court in 1970 and created the Foundation for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in 1971.

In June 1989, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, A. N. R. Robinson, revived the idea of a permanent international criminal court by proposing the creation of tribunal to address the illegal drug trade. In response, the General Assembly tasked the ILC with once again drafting a statute for a permanent court.

While work began on the draft, the UN Security Council established two ad hoc tribunals in the early 1990’s: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, created in 1993 in response to large-scale atrocities committed by armed forces during the Yugoslav Wars, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, created in 1994 following the Rwandan genocide. The creation of these tribunals further highlighted to many the need for a permanent international criminal court.

In 1994, the ILC presented its final draft statute for the International Criminal Court to the General Assembly and recommended that a conference be convened to negotiate a treaty that would serve as the Court’s statute.

To consider major substantive issues in the draft statute, the General Assembly established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, which met twice in 1995. After considering the Committee’s report, the General Assembly created the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of the ICC to prepare a consolidated draft text.

From 1996 to 1998, six sessions of the Preparatory Committee were held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, during which NGOs provided input and attended meetings under the umbrella organisation of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC). In January 1998, the Bureau and coordinators of the Preparatory Committee convened for an Inter-Sessional meeting in Zutphen in the Netherlands to technically consolidate and restructure the draft articles into a draft.

Finally, the General Assembly convened a conference in Rome in June 1998, with the aim of finalizing the treaty to serve as the Court’s statute. On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by a vote of 120 to seven, with 21 countries abstaining. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, the U.S., and Yemen.

Israel’s opposition to the treaty stemmed from the inclusion in the list of war crimes “the action of transferring population into occupied territory”, a provision added during the Rome Conference at the insistence of Arab countries with the specific intention of targeting Israeli citizens.

The UN General Assembly voted on December 9, 1999 and again on December 12, 2000 to endorse the ICC.

Following 60 ratifications, the Rome Statute entered into force on July 1, 2002 and the International Criminal Court was formally established.

The first bench of 18 judges was elected by the Assembly of States Parties in February 2003. They were sworn in at the inaugural session of the Court on March 11, 2003.

The Court issued its first arrest warrants on July 8, 2005, and the first pre-trial hearings were held in 2006.

The Court issued its first judgment in 2012 when it found Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty of war crimes related to using child soldiers. Lubanga was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In 2010, the states parties of the Rome Statute held the first Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda. The Review Conference led to the adoption of two resolutions that amended the crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court. Resolution 5 amended Article 8 on war crimes, criminalizing the use of certain kinds of weapons in non-international conflicts whose use was already forbidden in international conflicts. Resolution 6, pursuant to Article 5(2) of the Statute, provided the definition and a procedure for jurisdiction over the crime of aggression.

The ICC has four principal organs: the Presidency, the Judicial Divisions, the Office of the Prosecutor and the Registry.

The President is the most senior judge chosen by the eighteen judges in the Judicial Division.
The Judicial Division is composed of eighteen judges and hears cases before the Court.
The Office of the Prosecutor is headed by the Prosecutor, who investigates crimes and initiates criminal proceedings before the Judicial Division.
The Registry is headed by the Registrar and is charged with managing all the administrative functions of the ICC, including the headquarters, detention unit, and public defense office.

The ICC employs over 900 personnel from roughly 100 countries and conducts proceedings in English and French.

Intended to serve as the “court of last resort,” the ICC complements existing national judicial systems and may exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals. It lacks universal territorial jurisdiction and may only investigate and prosecute crimes committed within member states, crimes committed by nationals of member states, or crimes in situations referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council.

The ICC held its first hearing in 2006, concerning war crimes charges against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a Congolese warlord accused of recruiting child soldiers; his subsequent conviction in 2012 was the first in the court’s history. The Office of the Prosecutor has opened twelve official investigations and is conducting an additional nine preliminary examinations.

Dozens of individuals have been indicted in the ICC, including Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, former President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Libyan head of state Muammar Gaddafi, President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast and former Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On March 17, 2023, ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia Maria Lvova-Belova for child abductions in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia denounced the arrest warrants as “outrageous.” Putin became the first head of state of a U.N. Security Council Permanent Member to be the subject of an ICC arrest warrant. Although Russia withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute in 2016, and is thus not a participant in the ICC nor under its jurisdiction, Putin can be charged for actions against Ukraine, which is not a party but has accepted jurisdiction of the court since 2014. Should Putin travel to a state party, he can be arrested by local authorities. Later in 2023, Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs retaliated by placing several ICC officials on its wanted list. In March 2024, the ICC issued two more arrest warrants, for Sergey Kobylash, the commander of the Long-Range Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces, and Viktor Sokolov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet over their role in war crimes in Ukraine.

On May 20, 2024, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced his intention to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Al Qassem Brigades Mohammed Deif, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in connection to war crimes committed in the Israel-Hamas war. On November 21, warrants were formally issued for Netanyahu, Gallant and Deif. Warrants for Haniyeh and Sinwar were withdrawn following confirmation of their deaths in July and October respectively.

On January 23, 2025, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced requests for arrest warrants against Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and the Chief Justice of Afghanistan Abdul Hakim Haqqani, for crimes against humanity of the oppression and persecution of Afghan women and girls, who have been deprived of the freedom of movement, the rights to control their bodies, to education, and to a private and family life. Alleged resistance and opposition are brutally suppressed with murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, since 2021.

The process to establish the court’s jurisdiction may be “triggered” by any one of three possible sources: (1) a state party, (2) the Security Council or (3) a prosecutor. It is then up to the prosecutor acting proprio motu to initiate an investigation under the requirements of Article 15 of the Rome Statute. The procedure is slightly different when referred by a state party or the Security Council, in which cases the prosecutor does not need authorization of the Pre-Trial Chamber to initiate the investigation. Where there is a reasonable basis to proceed, it is mandatory for the prosecutor to initiate an investigation. The factors listed in Article 53 considered for reasonable basis include whether the case would be admissible, and whether there are substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice (the latter stipulates balancing against the gravity of the crime and the interests of the victims).

As of January 2025, 125 states[a] are parties to the Statute of the Court, including all the countries of South America, nearly all of Europe, most of Oceania and roughly half of Africa. Burundi and the Philippines were member states, but later withdrew effective October 27, 2017 and March 17, 2019, respectively. A further 29 countries[a] have signed but not ratified the Rome Statute. The law of treaties obliges these states to refrain from “acts which would defeat the object and purpose” of the treaty until they declare they do not intend to become a party to the treaty. Four signatory states—Israel in 2002, the United States on May 6, 2002, Sudan on August 26, 2008, and Russia on November 30, 2016 have informed the UN Secretary General that they no longer intend to become states parties and, as such, have no legal obligations arising from their signature of the Statute.

Forty-one additional states[a] have neither signed nor acceded to the Rome Statute. Some of them, including China and India, are critical of the Court.

The Court’s management oversight and legislative body, the Assembly of States Parties, consists of one representative from each state party. Article 112:  Each state party has one vote and “every effort” has to be made to reach decisions by consensus. Article 112 : If consensus cannot be reached, decisions are made by vote. Article 112:  The Assembly is presided over by a president and two vice-presidents, who are elected by the members to three-year terms.

The Assembly meets in full session once a year, alternating between New York and The Hague, and may also hold special sessions where circumstances require. Article 112:  Sessions are open to observer states and non-governmental organizations.

The Assembly elects the judges and prosecutors, decides the Court’s budget, adopts important texts (such as the Rules of Procedure and Evidence), and provides management oversight to the other organs of the Court. Article 112:  Article 46 of the Rome Statute allows the Assembly to remove from office a judge or prosecutor who “is found to have committed serious misconduct or a serious breach of his or her duties” or “is unable to exercise the functions required by this Statute.”

The states parties cannot interfere with the judicial functions of the Court. Disputes concerning individual cases are settled by the Judicial Divisions.

In 2010, Kampala, Uganda hosted the Assembly’s Rome Statute Review Conference.