International Criminal Court

[Page 390]When it was established in 1998, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was hailed as a millennial event of international criminal justice. The creation of the ICC marked the crystallization of the evolutionary process of international criminal law. The evolutionary process began with the Nuremberg Trials (1945–1946), which prosecuted 22 Nazi war criminals and put to death 12 of the alleged perpetrators, followed by the adoption of the International Criminal Tribunals, notably the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The ICTY Statute contains new elements of crimes against humanity, which would later be incorporated into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Unlike the international criminal tribunals, however, which were created in accordance with ...