The Rome Statute of the ICC has its flaws – the nature of the drafting process and the political issues at stake ensured that – but we have now reached a stage where the principle of individual criminal liability is established for those responsible for the most serious crimes, and where an institution has been established – on a permanent basis – to ensure the punishment of such individuals. The Court, no doubt, will serve as a painful reminder of the atrocities of the past century and the level to which humanity can stoop. I say nothing new when I tell you that it appears we are doomed to repeat history. As Judge Richard Goldstone, former Chief Prosecutor at The Hague Tribunals, has wryly commented: ‘The hope of “never again” became the reality of again and again.’ But at the same time I am convinced that the International Criminal Court, with independent prosecutors putting tyrants and torturers in the dock before independent judges, reflects a post-war aspiration come true.

Professor James Crawford spoke about the work of the UN International Law Commission in preparing the Draft Statute of the ICC, and the transformation of that draft into the final Statute as it emerged at Rome in the summer of 1998. During the time that Professor Crawford and his colleagues in the Commission were considering the Draft Statute, events compelled the creation of an international criminal tribunal on an ad hoc basis to respond to the atrocities that were being committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia