MEĐUNARODNI PROBLEMI

AGGRESSION AS AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME

VUČIĆ Mihajlo (Naučni saradnik u Institutu za međunarodnu politiku i privredu, Beograd), mihajlo@diplomacy.bg.ac.rs

The jurisdiction of the permanent International Criminal Court for the crime of aggression is due to activate during 2017. As the voting of the members of the Court’s Statute gets closer, critiques to its competence to prosecute aggression grow stronger, which is at the same time confusing and counterproductive. Those not at all negligible voices state that only Security Council can properly decide if an act of aggression was committed, that the aggression is a non‐justiciable political crime, that the two‐step procedure of ICC in its deliberations on aggression is contrary to a rule of consent of the state to judicial proceedings, that the possible overflow of proceedings will initiate national prosecutions toward third states and its officials which would endanger international legal rules on states and officials immunity from foreign jurisdiction. The author argues that all these critiques are either wrong in their views or overlook the fact that their views can easily be put against other international crimes which do not, however, suffer from their attacks. It is obvious that historical landmark of future criminal prosecutions for the development of international law and the stability of the international community is downgraded. The author concludes that, notwithstanding numerous problems that accompany it, the conception of aggression from the Statute of International Criminal Court will benefit the general prevention of unlawful uses of force in international relations and will diminish impunity for the “crime of all crimes”.

Keywords: aggression, International Criminal Court, international crimes, immunities, sovereignty