If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?
A core principle of American justice is judgement by a jury of your peers from your community according to our laws, not by foreigners on the other side of the planet according to foreign laws. Violations of our core principles through means we were not a party to is a violation of our sovereignty.
when it comes to Crimes against humanity (genocide, mass killings, tortures, etc) - our peers are whole Humanity, and everyone who support United Nation's Human Rights Declaration.
You cannot have American human rights to live, and at the same time deny the right to live to non-Americans. Which is what America is doing: extrajudicial murder of foreigners (drone strikes + collateral murder) and sponsoring of terrorism and genocide (Israel-gaza war).
the point is not to argue specific bullet points on obscure US codes, but 30 very basic unalienable universal human rights.
if USA denies these rights to the whole world, then there is no reason to expect the whole world support america in any way, like lending money by buying US treasuries, exchanging oil for freshly printed worthless USD, respecting US tourists' right to live when they are exploring the world, etc
When a US president signs a death list - the assassination of someone, does that person get a trial by a jury of their peers first?
Or do they just get a predator drone missile in their direction?
I think it's accurate to say that a core principle of American justice is that there is one set of rules for the in-group, and another for the out-group. And any institution that tries to normalize this is anathema to that principle.
(I'm not saying that's what happened, just explaining why I think it is morally right for the ICC to exist, however impractical when dealing with powerful nations.)
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it if the goal is checking the U.S. and its allies, or China and its allies. (Maybe it’s useful for checking Western Europe? Idk.)
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_City_Hall_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Morocco [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Turkey#...
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
And yes, I do agree with your general point: the ICC idea is beautiful. The problem is that the parties to the Rome statute (the real "meat" behind the ICC) has no intention to provide justice to the world, but want to use the ICC as a political weapon, in some cases to prepare for war.
If you intend to do nothing, a center that keeps files on individuals, nothing more, documenting all known human rights abuses, would achieve more.
> Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
Isn’t this because they are non-members?
> A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
No. For non-members it is assumed that they by default ask the ICC to not investigate any human rights crimes either involving their state, or on their soil. Which the ICC then has to respect ...
Or that WAS the case until last year. In the middle of their existing court case against Israel it became clear that Israel requested ICC drop the case on their territory, and of course Palestine has neither borders nor are they a member of the ICC (despite Palestine signing the Rome accords to immediately afterwards start screaming on TV that they wouldn't respect them as they relate to Palestinians themselves), and therefore there were no grounds for the case. So South Africa, amidst allegations of Qatarese bribery, was allowed to bring a claim, and that South Africa has now twice helped people convicted at the ICC escape ICC justice did not negate that (they helped Bashar Al-Assad, and Putin)
So then the ICC modified their own statutes, which they're not allowed to do, so that the particular kind of non-member that Palestine is, would be allowed to put disputed territory as valid territory retroactively for such complaints (because despite how the press presents it, Palestine's claims relate to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, specifically underage ones, on Israeli soil, NOT about what happened in Gaza. You see, the court has accepted an argument that since neither Hamas nor the PA allow investigators or journalists on their soil, claims there cannot reasonably be the basis for any conviction)
In other words, the court allowed what is effectively Hamas (not the PA) to enter Tel Aviv as territory for this court case.
You see, this is about Hamas scoring a PR victory. The idea that Hamas, through Qatar, via South Africa, is worried about the treatment of a West Bank resident Palestinian boy is utterly absurd. The only thing they care about is that it is an argument they might win, at which point the papers will be full of "Israel convicted at ICC for human rights abuses". This is the same Hamas that has mounted a suicide vest on an unwilling underage girl who was being treated in Israel for cancer, forced her to try to cross the Israeli border, and blew her to pieces when she tried to get help from the border guards, you see, THAT organization, is really worried about whether children who killed someone people get to see their parents sufficiently often in prison ...
Yes, Hamas is a party to the Rome statute (they agreed to respect it so they could partake in elections, elections, I might add, that ended with Hamas executing election officials in the emergency ward of a Gazan hospital) and plenty of other treaties at the UN. Including treaties that they'll prevent any and all terror attacks against civilians ... Meanwhile they AND the PA, pay Palestinians a monthly pension based on how badly they hurt Jews [1] (sorry, this organization that signed treaties to arrest any terrorists they know of "has stopped doing that" 4 months ago. They promise. Needless to say, the payments continue)
Obviously this ICC rule change is insanity and will lead to disaster, and they'll retract the rule when it is used by anyone else, for example, when Kurds enter a claim about abuse in Ankara for example, Iran or Iraq, or Druze against Syria, or ...
And while this is the most egregious example of abusing the ICC, it is far from the only one. There's a similar conflict with the US. The problem with the ICC is really quite simple: a lot of signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to respect any court decisions made by the ICC, and the ICC allows states to openly defy their treaty obligations without any consequences. The US and Israel, when they realized they didn't either, publicly withdrew so they'd remain honest. South Africa, Mongolia, Palestine, Hungary and others just started violating the treaties they agreed to without withdrawing.
When push comes to shove, a LOT of nations want war, but can't do it, or can't win it, and they see the ICC itself as a weapon of war. A weapon against "the international order" (ie. what the security council represents). The ICC lets them.
> How does that work? Who sets the statutes if the ICC itself cannot modify them?
Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...
This seems like an incredibly charitable reading of the US withdrawal given the ASMPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I’m curious, are you Israeli yourself?
> Oh it is an international treaty. So actually modifying the statutes would be a prolonged process involving all existing parties at the UN.
> However, the ICC also publishes statutes on their website, which they modify without considering the correct process.
> That, they can do. Nobody stops them.
I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
Nope. Not even close.
> I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story here. They can’t legally modify their statutes without consulting with the UN, but they can publish whatever statutes they want? What does this even mean?
This is international law, which is a name used for a huge mess of international treaties. What is there to say? There is no international police. If you don't respect international law, there is nobody to compel you to do anything. In essentially every case, you're beyond the reach of the counter party to the treaty (especially in this case since the ICC has zero reach). This is true whether "you" refers to a person or a country.
Hell, there's even valid reasons this keeps happening like that the political situation sometimes changes far faster than treaties can be negotiated.
There were some truly exceptional times in history, like the ending of WW2, where everyone agreed on a few rules and some limited things happened, but that time is long gone. Most countries find the international order deeply unfair, especially the "you're not allowed to move any borders unless you're one of the original nuclear powers" part. Russia is allowed to attack ... Iran is not. The "non-aligned movement" is essentially aligned on a single point: they all want to start limited wars against one or multiple of their neighbors but would face total economic collapse or worse if they did that and the US responded. That is the last straw holding the UN treaties in existence, the only enforcement mechanism that has survived 80 years of UN disintegration.
And now Trump got elected and has been sighted near said last straw with scissors, asking for money, complaining the straw costs too much. But don't be fooled: there's a lot of shouting at Trump, but nobody working to strengthen the treaties with a few more straws. And while I hate Trump, you have to give him this one: if he cuts, he may be giving the start signal for WW3, but saying he's causing it, is absurd.