5 - War Crimes and Internal Armed Conflict in the Rome Statute (1998)

Summary

Chapter 5 examines the negotiation of paragraphs (c) and (e) of Article 8(2) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The chapter provides a brief historical background before setting out the key turning points in the negotiation of these clauses. As in preceding chapters, the negotiations are considered from the perspectives of key actors: in this case, the ‘Like-Minded Group’, the P5 (particularly the USA, UK and France), the Non-Aligned Movement, and prominent civil society participants (e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FIDH). The chapter underlines that while like-minded and NGO moral authority and technical expertise played a large part in persuading wavering delegations, the internal armed conflict provisions closely reflect the preferences of the Western P3 as well as the post-Cold War liberal Zeitgeist.