Nobody’s Land: Where All step but No One Settles

The ILC adopts draft art. 7 on Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction.

by Giulia Bernabei*

Court HammerThe issue of immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction has been under the lens of the International Law Commission for approximately the last decade. During this time, the Secretariat, the former and the incumbent Special Rapporteurs, Mr. Roman A. Kolodkin and Ms. Concepción Escobar Hernández, various Governments, the Drafting Committee and the ILC in plenary, together with the GA Sixth Committee, have been involved, to varying degrees, in studying the issue.

In this post, I will contend that draft art 7, both in the wording of the Special Rapporteur and in the version eventually adopted by the ILC, does not reflect customary international law nor does it enshrine its progressive development.

I will focus on Ms. Escobar Hernandez fifth’s report released on 14 June 2016. The ILC considered the report at its sixty-eighth and sixty-ninth sessions in 2016 and 2017 respectively. On 30 May 2017, draft art. 7 was referred by the ILC to the drafting Committee, which delivered a report, then introduced to the ILC on 20 July 2017. On that occasion, by 21 votes in favour, 8 votes against and 1 abstention, the ILC provisionally adopted draft art. 7. Continue reading

ICC Al-Bashir case: South Africa Failed to Comply but is not Referred to ASP/UNSC

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the 25th AU Summit in South Africa ©KIM LUDBROOK / EPA

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the 25th AU Summit in South Africa ©KIM LUDBROOK / EPA

On Thursday 6 July 2017, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found that South Africa failed to comply with its obligations under the Rome Statute in the Omar Al-Bashir case. The former President of Sudan had visited South Africa on 13 June 2015 to attend the 25th Assembly of the African Union.  The South African government then took no steps to arrest Omar Al Bashir, claiming he benefited from immunity as a head of State. In March 2016, the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa had ruled the government had shown unlawful conduct “in failing to take steps to arrest and detain, for surrender to the International Criminal Court, the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir.”

The ICC found that South Africa failed to comply with its obligations by not arresting and surrendering Omar Al-Bashir to the Court while he was on South African territory between 13 and 15 June 2015. The Court considered that immunities did not apply as Sudan was in an analogous situation to those of States Parties to the Statute as a result of the UNSC’s resolution, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, triggering the Court’s jurisdiction in the situation in Darfur and imposing on Sudan the obligation to cooperate fully with the Court.

However, the Chamber considered that it is not warranted to refer South Africa’s non-compliance to the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) or the Security Council of the United Nations (UNSC). This decision was motivated on the facts that South Africa was the first State Party to seek from the Court a final legal determination on the extent of its obligations to execute a request for arrest and surrender of Omar Al-Bashir and that South Africa’s domestic courts have already found South Africa to be in breach of its obligations under its domestic legal framework.

For the full decision, click here.

Immunities and International Crimes – The Al-Bashir Conundrum

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during the 25th AU Summit in South Africa ©KIM LUDBROOK / EPA

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

On 13 October 2016, Professor Guénaël Mettraux and Professor John Dugard filed an amicus curiae brief before the Constitutional Court of South Africa In the matter between the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional  Development and the Southern African Litigation Center (“President Al-Bashir case”).

The proceeding are critically important to resolving the tension between a State’s obligation to respect the sovereign immunities of foreign state officials (including heads of states) and that State’s obligation to cooperate with the ICC.

In resolving this tension, Profs Mettraux and Dugard have laid down a series of important principles and effectively mapped a way out of the problem:

1. Immunities and international crimes – A brief historical overview

i. Traditional international law used to grant absolute immunity to heads of state in respect of all acts, commercial and criminal.

ii. Over time, international law started to carve out a number of exceptions to that general and absolutist principle (in particular in respect of commercial acts). This includes an exception to immunities as a defence and/or bar to jurisdiction when faced with international crimes charges (see next).

2. A customary international law exclusion of immunities as a defence and jurisdictional bar to international crimes prosecution

iii. Since at least the end of the Second World War and criminal prosecutions pertaining to that conflict, customary international law excludes the possibility for a Head of State (and other State officials) to rely on his immunity as a defence or as an objection to the jurisdiction of a court before which he appears on charges of international crimes (war crimes; crimes against humanity; or genocide).

iv. This is so whether the jurisdiction seeking to try him is a domestic or an international one. The loss of immunity in such a case is determined, not by the – national or international – character of the tribunal trying such a defendant, but by the international character of the underlying offence with which he is charged.

v. In the context of that exclusionary rule, none of the relevant instruments or relevant incidents of state practice draw a distinction between official and private acts of state officials. All conduct amounting to an international crime are encapsulated into the general exclusionary rule. Nor do these draw a distinction between sitting and former state officials. The exclusion of immunities as a defence and jurisdictional bar is absolute in its effect and pertains to any individual.

vi. Article 27 of the Statute of the ICC recognizes and gives effect to that general principle in the context of proceedings before the ICC. As a jurisdictional provision (dealing with one aspect of the Court’s jurisdiction ratione personae), Article 27 only deals with the effect (or, rather, the absence of effect) of an official position and related immunities on the jurisdiction of the Court itself. It does not regulate, nor purports to regulate, the effect of these immunities on the jurisdiction of any other court. Continue reading