In an openGlobalRights article published in May—The International Criminal Court at Risk—our organizations sounded alarm bells over the emerging capacity crisis at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Describing the high demands for the ICC to respond to impunity around the world, the reluctance of states to fully fund necessary budget increases and resulting delays in existing investigations and cases, we stressed that the ICC risks falling behind in the fight against impunity.
Since then, the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC has proposed to increase its capacity over the next three years to what it terms its “basic size”, resulting in an additional cost of €18 million annually. It says that this is the minimum size needed to respond to demands placed on the office with “quality, effectiveness, and efficiency”.
…even the increases sought by the Prosecutor fall far short of the what’s needed.If the “basic size” is implemented, the annual budget of the Office of the Prosecutor will reach €60 million and the court’s total budget will undoubtedly exceed €150 million. This is a big investment. However, international justice will never be cheap and the budget does not stand out significantly when compared with other important international institutions and multilateral efforts. For example, the ICC Prosecutor currently operates with €8 million less than the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at its peak. Granted, the ICTY carried out a significantly higher number of investigations and prosecutions than the ICC is expected to deliver. But the ICTY dealt with one set of interconnected cases and conflicts, while the ICC is already working across nine distinct situations in eight countries.
