ABSTRACT
The international criminal justice system has roots that date back to the judgment of the International Military Tribunal in October 1946. However, it was not until the 1990s when efforts to enhance and establish new institutions to end impunity for violators of international criminal law really gained momentum with the development of the International Criminal Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), and most notably the International Criminal Court (ICC). During the process of approving the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, creating what is now the ICC, the assumption of a deterrent effect was openly touted. Gresham Sykes and David Matza introduced a model for techniques of neutralisation that hold some relevance to deterrence and International Court of Justice (ICJ). There are significant factors impacting any real potential of deterrence at the individual level and there are major structural issues within the extant ICJ systems that serve as additional barriers to achieving general or specific deterrence.
