President Nicolas Sarkozy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a meeting of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party in Paris, France, 2008. Taamallah Mehdi/ Press Association. All rights reserved.On 14 December 2017, the 123 member states party to the International Criminal Court (ICC) made the historic decision to activate the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. In principle, the ICC may be able to hold political or military leaders of states individually criminally responsible for the crime of aggression. However, to be effective, ratification is essential, and only a few ICC states are willing to comply with this decision. In particular, France and the United Kingdom, who have supported the work of the ICC since its creation, do not appear to wish to ratify the decision. Surely, it is time for them to do so.
The remit of the International Criminal Court
The aim of the ICC, which was created in 2002, is to put an end to impunity for perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community, and to contribute to the prevention of such crimes. It aims to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. All these crimes, with the exception of the crime of aggression, were defined in the 2002 Statute of the ICC. States party to the ICC have been discussing the definition of the crime of aggression since then. In 2010 in Kampala, they agreed on the following definition:
the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
