Strengths And Weaknesses Of The International Criminal Court

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Introduction
On July 17, 1998 South Africa signed and proceeded to ratify, the Rome Statute of the International Court (Plessis, 2007). South Africa was one of the earliest supporters for setting up the court that would be known to try extreme cases of human rights violations. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was in fact created to take care of any atrocities and punishing them within the international borders, ones that cannot be dealt with within their own territories. The ICC stands as a last resort to any criminal events still standing, within the realm of where its jurisdiction lies (Plessis, 2007). The International Criminal Court has been an overall longstanding and significant growth mechanism internationally, and has benefited
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The ICC came as a very large and impactful process that was to simplify and assist in the convictions of these hard criminals. Although the ICC was created through the goal of having an overall easier process and to provide justice, the ICC is also often criticized for its lack of organization and weak basic structure. This paper will focus directly on the reliance of Africa in relation to the International Criminal Court and how it is beneficial and how it can be improved. This will be examined through looking at the ICC’s weakness and strengths mainly in relation to Africa, and by taking a look at possible solutions to the ongoing problems that the ICC is facing.

Weaknesses
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been known to be, as the name states, a global court, although in actuality, it has a very limited reach (Tolbert, 2016). Under the jurisdiction of the ICC there are four crimes that can be covered under the Rome Statute, which include:
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Omar was the President of the Republic of Sudan since October 16, 1993, he was charged with many counts of heinous crimes. This was including being a co-perpetrator for counts of crimes against humanity, which included: murder, extermination, torture and rape, two counts of war crimes, three counts of genocide and more ("The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir", 2016). Clearly this was an extremely large case for Africa in all, it not only affected the people of Sudan, but also affected all of Africa, and they, as a result, of course wanted justice. A case like this really needed a lot of time and sensitive work put into it to be solved. Although, unfortunately the ICC did not show any signs of power and strength when it came time to protect Africa. This provided that not only did other nations despise the ICC’s lack of power, but Africa itself, where the ICC was mainly situated, did not receive enough attention either. In this case the issue was that the ICC had no power to make the arrest of the former President of the Republic of Sudan, this was because the ICC had no means to make this arrest (Background to the ICC Al-Bashir issue, 2015). It had no army or police force to be able to make the arrest unlike domestic courts

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