CYIL Vol. 6, 2015

CAROLLANN BRAUM CYIL 6 ȍ2015Ȏ criminal enterprises. She is currently a PhD student at Charles University, studying International Criminal Law, and lives in Prague with her family. Carollann teaches law at the John H. Carey School of Law at Anglo-American University and the School of Business at Prague College. 1. Introduction After years of debate, discussion and indecision, in June 2010, the international community finally came to a consensus on a definition on the crime of aggression and the requirements for the International Criminal Court to have jurisdiction over it. 1 While the crime of aggression had been originally included in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 2 , the states parties had been unable to agree on a definition which would allow the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute high level officials for the crime. 3 At this point, the States Parties agreed to include the crime of aggression among the four prosecutable crimes; however, it was to remain inactive until a definition could be agreed upon. 4 It took over a decade, at the Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda, for the States Parties to come together and finally come to a consensus on all of the elements involved in the crime of aggression: the most contentious of which was the role of the Security Council. 5 A few words on why the definition was slow in coming and why the Council’s involvement was insisted upon are necessary. More than half a century before this dilemma, the first use of the crime of aggression (it was then known as the crime against peace) was in the Nuremberg trials following the Second World War. 6 However, after that time, the geopolitical landscape of the world changed dramatically. With the shift of the political poles leading to the unprecedented tensions of the Cold War, which can be particularly well-illustrated by the actions of the Security Council itself, the use of the crime of aggression at the international level became far too much of a threat for world leaders. The crime of aggression is a particularly challenging crime because it is inherently political as it seeks to prosecute the highest government and military officials for acts committed on a large scale. Unsurprisingly, this made many world leaders very hesitant to see the crime through to adoption for prosecution in an 1 AKANDE, Dapo, What Exactly was Agreed in Kampala on the Crime of Aggression? , EJIL: Talk!, 2010, URL: [cit. 2015-08-14]. 2 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 183/9 (1998), [hereinafter Rome Statute]. 3 Fact Sheet on the Review Conference of the Rome Statute, Article 2-2: Definition of the crime of aggression, elements, conditions of the exercise of the jurisdiction of the Court, URL: [cit. 2015-08-14]. 4 Id . 5 AKANDE, cited above. 6 Charter of the International Military Tribunal, London, 8 August 1945.

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