Editing International Criminal Court (section)

=== Principle of complementarity ===
The Rome Statute's principle of complementarity (that the Court will only prosecute if states are unwilling or unable to) is often taken for granted in the legal analysis of international criminal law and its jurisprudence. Initially the thorny issue of the actual application of the complementarity principle arose in 2008, when [[William Schabas]] published his influential paper.{{Clarify|reason=Influential paper about what? What influence did it have, and on whom?|date=November 2024}}<ref>{{Cite journal | doi=10.1007/s10609-007-9054-5|title = 'Complementarity in practice': Some uncomplimentary thoughts| journal=Criminal Law Forum| volume=19| pages=5–33|year = 2008|last1 = Schabas|first1 = William A.|s2cid = 144796686}}</ref> No substantive research was made by other scholars on this issue for quite some time. In June 2017, Victor Tsilonis advanced the same criticism which is reinforced by events, practices of the Office of the Prosecutor and ICC cases in the Essays in Honour of [[Nestor Courakis]]. His paper essentially argues that the Αl‐Senussi case arguably is the first instance of the complementarity principle's actual implementation eleven whole years after the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.<ref>
{{Cite web |url=http://crime-in-crisis.com/en/?p=305 |title=Victor Tsilonis, "The Awakening Hypothesis of the Complementarity Principle", in C.D. Spinellis, Nikolaos Theodorakis, Emmanouil Billis, George Papadimitrakopoulos (eds.), Europe in Crisis: Crime, Criminal Justice and the Way Forward, Essays in Honour of Nestor Courakis, Volume II: Essays in English, French, German, and Italian, (Athens: Ant. N. Sakkoulas Publications), (2017), pp. 1257–1303. |access-date=25 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170812055852/http://crime-in-crisis.com/en/?p=305 |archive-date=12 August 2017 |url-status=live}}
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On the other hand, in 2017, Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda invoked the principle of complementarity in the situation between Russia and Georgia in the [[Ossetia]] region.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.icc‐cpi.int/CourtRecords/CR2015_19375.PDF |title=Situation in Georgia, Public Document with Confidential...|pages=132–133, 150–151 |date=10 April 2017}}{{dead link|date=May 2024}}</ref> Moreover, following the threats of certain African states (initially Burundi, Gambia and South Africa) to withdraw their ratifications, Bensouda again referred to the principle of complementarity as a core principle of ICC's jurisdiction and has more extensively focused on the principle's application on the latest Office of The Prosecutor's Report on Preliminary Examination Activities 2016.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, regarding the situation in the Kasaï provinces, Democratic Republic of the Congo |url=https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-prosecutor-international-criminal-court-fatou-bensouda-regarding-situation-kasai |access-date=2023-09-30 |website=International Criminal Court}}</ref>

Some advocates have suggested that the ICC go "beyond complementarity" and systematically support national capacity for prosecutions.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Concannon |first=Brian |date=1 October 2000 |title=Beyond Complementarity: The International Criminal Court and National Prosecutions, A View from Haiti – Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2000 |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2719650 |access-date=29 September 2023 |website=ssrn.com|ssrn=2719650 }}</ref> They argue that national prosecutions, where possible, are more cost-effective, preferable to victims and more sustainable.