ABSTRACT
The International Criminal Court is young, and to date, there has not been a huge amount of practice with regard to defences, and even less so with regard to cultural defences. This chapter highlights some of the early practice of the Court with regard to cultural issues and analyses where cultural defences could have played a part. It presents an analysis of linguistic diversity as an aspect of cultural accommodation, the cultural context of child soldiers, and the destruction of cultural property. The chapter focuses on the question of linguistic diversity and how linguistic challenges were dealt with by the Court in the case of Katanga. It discusses the issue of child soldiers and includes a review of the cases of Lubanga and Ongwen. The chapter provides an analysis of the Al Mahdi case, which centred on the issue of the destruction of cultural property.
