Essay --

ii. The ICC and Restorative Justice The recognition of victim’s rights as an integral part of the ICC is exemplified in the Preamble of the Rome Statute, which declares that the ICC was created, in part, in recognition of the fact that â€Å"during this century millions of children, women and men have been the victims of unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity.† However, the ICC’s recognition of victim’s rights does not go towards the effectiveness of the ICC at achieving the victim’s goals. The ICC cannot effectively achieve the goals of restorative justice because of: (1) it’s inflexible demand for Western methods of adjudication; and (2) its inherent emphasis on societal rehabilitation as opposed to individual rehabilitation. First, the ICC places an unabated amount of pressure on the demand for a criminal prosecution in the context of a courtroom. The Preamble and Article 1 of the Rome Statute sets forth an important restriction on power of the ICC: it â€Å"shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions.† A case will be considered inadmissible when it is â€Å"being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it† or â€Å"has been investigated by a State which has jurisdiction over it and the State has decided not to prosecute†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The question most often posed by commentators is: can non-prosecutorial measures demonstrate â€Å"an intent to bring the person concerned to justice?† In the trial against Congolese warlords Germain Katanga & Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, Katanga’s defense counsel challenged the admissibility of the case. The Trial Chamber offers two interpretations of the word â€Å"unwillingness† as used in Article 1 7: (1) unwillingness â€Å"motivated by the desire to obstruct the course o... ...avior, i.e. laws, prosecutions support societal rehabilitation by influencing the moral values of that society. Such societal rehabilitation can inoculate the population against lapses into oppressive behavior and repressive regimes. However, prosecutions do not attempt to rehabilitate or change the moral values of the perpetrator, or individual victims. This is primarily brought about by the challenge to balance the goal of restorative justice with the interests of efficiency and fairness. Also, the remoteness of the ICC may play a role in its inability to serve as a rehabilitative function for individuals. Prosecutions at The Hague builds further distance between the conflict and those who participated in and were victims of it. The empirical weight of the ICC’s geographic remoteness has been long disputed; however, no conclusive determinations have been reached.