The efforts to ensure individual criminal accountability culminated in the establishment of the International Criminal Court on July 1, 2002.Originally applied to hold pirates and slave traders accountable for their crimes, the principle of universal jurisdiction today extends to all who commit some of the most serious human rights violations. The ICC is limited also in that it can only prosecute crimes committed after July 1, 2002. Prominent Cases Involving Universal Jurisdiction the United Kingdom’s consideration of Spain’s request to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ( here ,... U.S. prosecution of the former Liberian president’s son, Chuckie Taylor Spanish prosecution of … Such domestic legislation empowers national courts to investigate and prosecute persons suspected of crimes potentially amounting to violations of international law regardless of where the crime was committed, the nationality of the suspect, or the nationality of the victim.Amnesty International reports that, in total, 163 of the 193 UN Member States “can exercise universal jurisdiction over one or more crimes under international law, either as such crimes or as ordinary crimes under national law.” Canada is another example of a State that provides domestic exercise of universal jurisdiction, in its In particular, Spanish courts have made use of universal jurisdiction to try individuals from around the globe. Most countries limit their jurisdiction to national jurisdiction, that is, they will only hear cases in their courts that have occurred on their territory or that will affect their national interests. While the number of States applying the principle in practice is increasing, it still remains low.
Jurisdiction is the ability of a court to hear a case. Recently, however, the Spanish government restricted its courts’ ability to hear such cases by narrowing the legal basis for exercising universal jurisdiction to those cases that are not already before another competent jurisdiction and that involve Spanish victims, perpetrators located in Spain, or Spanish interests. An environment supporting of the principle of universal jurisdiction was created following the establishment of the ad-hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994, respectively, and extended to the establishment of the internationalized courts such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts for Cambodia. The principle was codified for torture in the 1984 Torture Convention.While the courts of the country in which the crime took place would appear to be the preferred jurisdiction to obtain justice for victims of gross human rights violations, there are two central reasons why a system of universal jurisdiction is necessary in many instances:Courts in the “territorial state” are often inaccessible for victims for a variety of reasons, including the availability of domestic immunities or self-imposed amnesties and de facto impunity and security risks, especially when the crimes were state-sponsored. To be truly universal, the commitment to universal jurisdiction will need to expand to countries outside of the European Union, Latin America, or South Africa.The ongoing proceedings against former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré in Senegal on the basis of universal jurisdiction and the extradition of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori from Chile to Peru serve as two promising examples for an expansion.And CCR’s case against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, previously filed in Germany, is one avenue the Center is pursuing to ensure that U.S. officials can also be held accountable for torture, war crimes, and crimes against humanity under the principle of universal jurisdiction.For more than a decade, the CCR has been working in foreign and international fora for accountability for the U.S. torture program using the principle of universal jurisdiction, following a refusal by the Department of Justice or President Obama to open criminal investigations at home. These limitations flow from international legal principles of sovereign equality and noninterference in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states (see UN Charter, Art.
Accordingly, there is no condition that the suspect or victim be a citizen of the state exercising universal jurisdiction or that the crime directly harmed the state’s own national interests. A national or international court’s authority to prosecute individuals for international crimes committed in other territories depends on both the domestic legal framework and the facts of each particular case.A range of States’ national laws provide for some form of universal jurisdiction. ORDER AND THE COURT Kissinger's critique of universal jurisdiction has two principal targets: the soon-to-be-formed International Criminal Court and the exercise of universal jurisdiction by national courts. Indeed, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC indicated there’s a “risk of an impunity gap,” meaning some human rights violators may fall through the legal cracks, unless “national authorities, the international community, and the ICC work together to ensure that all appropriate means for bringing other perpetrators to justice are used.” Similarly, the preamble of the Rome Statute of the ICC expressly provides that it “is the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes” and emphasizes that “the International Criminal Court established under this Statute shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions.”Universal jurisdiction is therefore an important complement to traditional jurisdictions as well as to international justice mechanisms.While the increase of universal jurisdiction proceedings is a testament to the fact that universal jurisdiction is no longer a mere legal theory, there are still necessary components to ensure that cases are successful.
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