The Jurisdictional Scope of Situations Before the International Criminal Court

Abstract

How should the jurisdictional scope of situations before the International Criminal Court (ICC) be defined? Modern conflicts are seldom well-defined events. They stop and re-start, have precursors, and encounter periods of low intensity and resurgence, as armed groups remobilize, undergo new configurations, or link up with other movements. Combatants, small arms, and extremist rhetoric migrate from one territory to another, precipitating new, inter-related violence. How should the ICC deal with such complex parameters? The prosecution will normally focus its investigation on the most serious criminal episodes within a situation. But what if the most serious incidents are separated by large periods of abeyance, representing different phases of violence, or waged between different formations of rival armed groups? What commonalities are required to encapsulate such acts within the same situation? These issues will be guided both by the prevailing factual circumstances as well as objective relational links. The discussion below examines a number of these issues in the first decisions of the ICC on the jurisdictional confines of situations.