The inaction controversy

doi:10.1017/CBO9781316134115.024

16 - The inaction controversy

Neglected words and new opportunities

from PART IV - Interpretation and application

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014

Darryl Robinson

Edited by

Carsten Stahn and

Mohamed M. El Zeidy

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Carsten Stahn: Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Mohamed M. El Zeidy: Affiliation:
International Criminal Court

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Summary

This chapter demonstrates and examines a curious interpretive disconnect in the complementarity discourse. Many commentators insist that admissibility due to state inaction is a ‘gloss’ and an ‘invented’ prong, and have expressed alarm and concern about the International Criminal Court's departure from the Rome Statute. Such critiques are rooted in a surprisingly widely-shared and firmly-held belief that Article 17 creates a one-step test based entirely on the famous ‘unwilling or unable’ criteria. However, as this chapter demonstrates, Article 17 expressly provides not a one-step test, but a two-step test, the first explicit question of which is whether a state is investigating or prosecuting the case or has done so.

Nonetheless, the fifty-five words of Article 17 that explicitly require a national investigation or prosecution routinely disappear into a shared blind spot. The popular simplification of complementarity is so entrenched that when the Court applies the actual Article 17, the Court is accused of ‘departing’ from the Statute and ‘inventing’ new requirements. While many commentators find it a mystery that the Court believes that a case is admissible in the absence of proceedings, the real mystery is why this proposition is controversial. This chapter provides examples from the literature to demonstrate the existence, prevalence, persistence and impact of this strange disconnect. Once misplaced recriminations about Statute violations are set aside, we discover rich ground for a much more exciting debate about the role of the Court vis-à-vis national systems.

Type: Chapter
Information: The International Criminal Court and Complementarity
From Theory to Practice
, pp. 460 - 502

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316134115.024 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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