Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent international court that tries individuals, rather than states, for specified grave crimes. Its subject-matter jurisdiction means the categories of crimes it can prosecute: Article 5 of the Rome Statute lists genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.

Genocide

Under Article 6, genocide involves specified acts committed with the intent to destroy, wholly or partly, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such. The defining element is this special intent, not simply the number of victims.

• The acts include killing group members and causing them serious bodily or mental harm.
• They also include deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring its children to another group.

Crimes against humanity

Under Article 7, these are specified acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. They do not require a connection with an armed conflict.

• The listed acts include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer, torture, rape and other specified forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance and apartheid.
• An attack in this context involves multiple acts pursuant to, or in furtherance of, a state or organisational policy; it need not be a military attack.

War crimes

Under Article 8, war crimes comprise specified serious violations of international humanitarian law in international and non-international armed conflicts. The applicable offences differ according to the type of conflict.

• Examples include intentionally attacking civilians, torture, taking hostages, and conscripting or enlisting children under fifteen into armed forces or groups, or using them to participate actively in hostilities.
• The conduct must be connected with an armed conflict; an ordinary crime committed during wartime is not automatically a war crime.

Crime of aggression

Under Article 8 bis, this is the planning, preparation, initiation or execution of a state act of aggression that, by its character, gravity and scale, manifestly violates the United Nations Charter.

• It is a leadership crime: the accused must be in a position effectively to control or direct a state's political or military action.
• State acts of aggression can include invasion, military occupation, bombardment and blockade.