The premise of the Establishment of the International Criminal Court

Abstract

The International Criminal Court is an embryo of international criminal jurisdiction for certain serious facts and under certain conditions. The court is in a continuous process of improvement. It is a relatively new institution in international law, differentiated from those of the same type created ad-hoc for certain countries and deeds committed during a designated period. Therefore, the study of all the problems that this institution raises in the context of contemporary international law and in the relationship with the criminal law of the states represents a challenge for any researcher. The court was created as a result of spectacular developments in terms of realities and criminal law. In terms of realities, mankind was confronted with serious crimes targeting entire human groups, on ethnic grounds, with horrors that have not been known since World War II in the last decade of the 20th century. In the field of international criminal law, the establishment of ad hoc International Courts for the trial of crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the efforts to establish courts in Cambodia and Sierra Leone, led to the conception of the need to create a permanent and universal body to ensure the prosecution and punishment of acts of this nature, without forgetting its preventive role through its very existence.