Statement by representative of the Russian Federation Mr.Sergey Leonidchenko at UNSC Arria-formula meeting "20th anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute: reflections on the relationship between the International Criminal Court and the Security Council"
Mme.President,
It has been 20 years since the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court entered into force. An anniversary is always a good opportunity to sum up preliminary results of one’s work. Unfortunately, this anniversary turns out a rather sad occasion. Over the two decades of its work, the ICC put the very concept of international criminal justice six feet under.
Let’s see how it happened.
The ideas of combating impunity and ensuring equality of all before the law are very lucrative. When the ICC was first conceived and those slogans were articulated, our country was among the first to join the negotiations process.
The Nuremberg Tribunal served as a legal and moral guidance for the authors of the Rome Statute. Back then, great expectations were pinned on the ICC. It was supposed to look into the gravest crimes under the international law and investigate in an impartial and effective manner. This blissful concept was so good that one wanted to believe in it. Our country did as well. In 2000, we voted in favor of adopting the Rome Statute, that we signed it and embarked on the ratification process. The quote which was cited at the beginning of this meeting provides a good illustration of our attitude to the ICC when it was first founded.
However, none of those great expectations was fated to become true. Over the years of its operation, the ICC has made but few decisions. Final verdicts can be finger counted. Most cases collapsed when being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. They never made it to the courtroom. Billions of dollars were spent to achieve these rather unimposing results, to say the least.
But it is not all about money. Such colossal expenditures could have been justified if the ICC had really helped stabilize the situation, stop violence, and promote lasting reconciliation in countries on its agenda. But there were no such cases. The results of the ICC engagement on the Libyan and Darfur files that UNSC Security Council passed on to the Court appear especially indicative.
When NATO had a burning urge to start an “unprovoked, unjustified aggressive war of choice” against the Libyan state, the ICC, being a faithful bandog of this “purely defensive union”, made up a case against M.Gaddafi overnight. Those hastily cobbled fakes were what collective West used to justify its actions in Libya which were nothing but military aggression.
UNSC resolution 1973 and provisions of the UN Charter were grossly violated. When a no-fly zone was established, NATO perceived it as a carte blanche for carpet bombings of Libya. The result is well known. A once flourishing country was destroyed and its leader brutally killed without charge or trial. Next came chaos and devastation of a civil war, and this nightmare is not over yet.
ICC acted as an accomplice in this story. Its then Prosecutor L. Moreno Ocampo replicated such clumsy and awkward fakes in order to dehumanize the Libyan leadership, that it would be embarrassing to cite them now. Here is one quote though: “Muammar Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women during his violent crackdown on the rebels and he had even provided his soldiers with Viagra to stimulate the potential for attacks”.
Another fantasy thriller story from the Prosecutor runs as follows. M.Gaddafi allegedly used “black mercenaries” to commit “atrocities” that regular troops were not capable of.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International used to try and find evidence to back those and other miserable fakes that laid down the groundwork for charges against M.Gaddafi. They failed to. A scandal was starting. In order to hush it up, the ICC launched an internal investigation, but its results were never publicized. But we can say for sure that none of those who were responsible for fabrication of alleged evidence was never held to account.
War crimes of NATO states in Libya is a separate topic. Since the Council passed the Libya file to the ICC, the Court held relevant jurisdiction in this respect. There was plenty of evidence about victims of indiscriminate bombardments among Libyan civilians. The ICC never investigated those. The prosecutors bashfully swept this aspect under the carpet. Relevant paragraphs in ICC reports to the Security Council became shorter and shorter until one day they vanished for good. There are victims, but there are no perpetrators – a traditional formula applicable to any aggressive actions of the collective West. This is how they see impartiality and countering impunity.
Nor was the ICC interested in the carnage of M.Gaddafi. Apparently, the Criminal Court believes extrajudicial killings of “unwanted” leaders is a normal practice.
ICC’s egregious incompetence clearly manifested itself in the context of the Darfur file. Since the moment the Security Council transferred this case to the ICC, we have seen no progress either in investigations or court activities – to say nothing of assistance in promoting national reconciliation.
Against total failure of the Libyan and Sudanese experiments at the ICC, calls to the Security Council to pass on new files to the Court are but surprising. Russia will take whatever measures are required to guard the Security Council from repeating such unfortunate mistakes.
It is not about the way the Security Council interacts with the Criminal Court. It is about what has become of the ICC since it was founded and whose interests it serves today.
Now we hear Western representatives deliver passionate speeches about the need to help and cooperate with the ICC to “punish Russia”. Frankly speaking, it sounds more like a call to settle political scores rather than combat impunity. If the guilty side was appointed in advance, why need all this farce with the Court?
The situation gets even more peculiar if we take a closer look at how the same Western states (who now claim to be champions of international criminal justice) behave when it comes to holding their nationals accountable for committing war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Look at the Afghan or Iraqi files of the ICC, where an issue of accountability of US and UK military was raised. Today those countries advocate for cooperation with the ICC. But what did they do back then?
They made it clear to the Court that they would not tolerate any allegations or accusations. There is specialized legislation in the United States about protection of US military. International legal experts know it as “Hague Invasion Act”. This nickname was not accidental, because the law allows to employ any means to exonerate any citizen of the US or its ally who have been detained pursuant to an ICC order.
In Great Britain, there is a law “On foreign military operations” that in fact protects British military from criminal prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed abroad. This law let British soldiers evade accountability for having tortured and murdered civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2020, the United States abased itself so far as to impose personal sanctions on the ICC Prosecutor and staff, that i.a. envisaged a ban on entering the country, “freezing” of accounts and assets.
Everyone knows what it led up to – the ICC Prosecutor’s Office “deprioritized” investigations into crimes of British and American soldiers in the framework of Afghan and Iraqi files. When translated from the bureaucratic to human language, it means that all those cases were once again swept under the rug. There are victims, but once again, there will be neither perpetrators nor justice. End of story – time to break up.
The ICC embarks on countering so-called impunity in the interests of Western colleagues. It stops immediately once there is even slightest risk that may come in the way of those interests. So it is no surprise that the ICC is predominantly focused on the developing states. The Court has turned into a handy political tool that the West uses to promote its neo-colonial strategies.
Russia wants nothing in common with such sort of an institution. As the ICC started to degenerate, we had to put on hold the ratification process of the Rome Statute. In November 2016 we made a decision to “recall” our signature under the Rome Statute for good.
Over the 20 years of existence, the ICC demonstrated complete inability to administer unprejudiced and independent justice. It has become an instrument of exerting political pressure on the unwanted states and governments.
A clear confirmation of that can be found in statements made by those countries who lately imposed sanctions on the ICC to prevent it from bringing their military to account. Today they speak of millions of dollars of so-called voluntary contributions that should help the ICC work on the Ukrainian file. But look at the United States. Watching them try to surpass their own legislation that prohibits any engagement with the ICC is amusing indeed. The West is openly paying off for its ordered process at the ICC, where the culprit has been picked in advance. Sending national teams of forensic experts that should “help” the ICC keep record of Russia’s alleged crimes serves the same goal. So the ICC is just a folding screen, and behind this screen the collective West is concocting a rigged trial against our country.
Today there are countless clubs and associations, among them ‘Friends of Countering Impunity’ and ‘Joint Investigation Team’. Among its members, this Joint Team has Ukraine that stands out due to its total neglect of the international humanitarian law that includes tortures and massacres of prisoners of war, targeted shelling, bombardments and attacks against civil facilities. This Team also comprises Western states, who openly deliver weapons to the Kiev regime, including long range and rocket artillery, as well as cluster munitions that they boastfully claimed to have destroyed some time ago. All these “presents” keep killing the people in Donbas. But this is hardly what interests the Joint Investigation Team – the only culprit has long been named.
Reports that the ICC has joined the Investigation Team give a finishing touch to this picture of complete degradation of this institution which was once associated with such great expectations.
That’s all, Mme.President.
