Whereas the preservation of international peace and
security rests on adherence to the rule of law and the principles of justice by
the nations and peoples of the world;
Whereas international peace and security are threatened by
the commission of the most serious international crimes, including war crimes,
genocide, and crimes against humanity;
Whereas the prosecution of individuals suspected of
committing the most serious international crimes is often impeded by domestic,
political, and legal obstacles;
Whereas the inability of local and national court systems
to prosecute those individuals responsible for the most serious violations of
international criminal law demonstrates the need for a permanent international
mechanism for ensuring that such violations are investigated and
prosecuted;
Whereas while ad hoc tribunals have demonstrated the
success of international courts in addressing the atrocities committed in
specific conflicts, they have significant limitations;
Whereas the ability of ad hoc tribunals to punish and
deter the most serious international crimes is severely limited by the
difficulty of creating and sustaining them;
Whereas, on July 1, 2002, the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court entered into force and the permanent International
Criminal Court (ICC) was created;
Whereas the ICC has jurisdiction over only the most
serious violations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide
committed by individuals after July 1, 2002;
Whereas these are the most serious and horrendous crimes
imaginable, and the failure to systematically punish such crimes offends
universally accepted standards of law and morality and threatens the
establishment of peace and security;
Whereas the ICC follows universally accepted international
law in defining war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, including
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
and the Geneva Conventions (1949), but it does not create any new international
crimes;
Whereas the ICC was designed as a court of last resort,
not as a replacement for national judicial systems;
Whereas the ICC only has jurisdiction if national courts
are too weak, too damaged, or too biased to try those responsible for the most
serious violations of international criminal law;
Whereas the ICC guarantees the right to a fair trial,
including the right to counsel, a prohibition on trials in absentia, the right
to cross-examine witnesses, protection against double jeopardy, and protection
from self-incrimination;
Whereas more than half the countries of the world, 108,
have ratified the Rome Statute and become members of the ICC;
Whereas the democracies of the world have overwhelmingly
embraced the ICC, more than 70 percent of the world’s democracies are already
members of the ICC and many more have indicated a desire to join;
Whereas almost all of the most significant allies of the
United States are already members of the ICC, including the United Kingdom,
Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and
many others;
Whereas new democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin American,
and Africa are also strong supporters of the ICC, joining the ICC helps them
strengthen the rule of law and respect for human rights, protecting against a
return to tyranny;
Whereas the ICC has investigated crimes against humanity,
war crimes, and genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central
African Republic, Uganda, and Darfur, Sudan, and has issued arrest warrants in
all four situations;
Whereas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
government forces and rebel militias have killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians and devastated large portions of the country;
Whereas in Uganda, more than 20,000 boys and girls, some
as young as 9, have been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army to serve as
child soldiers and sex slaves;
Whereas the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Omar
al-Bashir, President of Sudan, for war crimes and crimes against
humanity;
Whereas in the Darfur region of Sudan, government-backed
forces have conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide that has
killed nearly 400,000 people; and
Whereas none of the individuals responsible for the
atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic,
Sudan, or Uganda are likely to be prosecuted by the local court systems, the
ICC is the only hope for punishing those responsible for the worst atrocities:
Now, therefore, be it
That it is the sense of Congress that the
President, acting through the Secretary of State and the permanent
representatives of the United States to the United Nations, should—
(1)support United Nations Security Council
referrals of situations involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity to the International Criminal Court (ICC), except where such a
referral would not be in the national interest of the United States;
(2)include as stated policy of the United
States Government to support the mandate and purpose of the Rome Statute of the
ICC, and in support of that policy reactivate the United State signature of the
Rome Statute by a note to the United Nations Secretary-General;
(3)cooperate with investigations and
prosecutions conducted by the ICC, except where such investigations or
prosecutions are not in the national interest of the United States;
(4)exercise the right of the United States to
actively participate as an observer in meetings of the Assembly of State
Parties to the Rome Statute so as to ensure that the ICC develops in a manner
consistent with the national interest of the United States; and
(5)invoke in the interest of the United
States, waivers of provisions in United States law that restrict or limit
assistance and cooperation with the ICC.