ABSTRACT
On 17 July 1998, 120 states decided to create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to try the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when states are unwilling or unable to carry out investigation or prosecution.2 Upon the 60th ratification of the Statute of the ICC on 1 July 2002, the Court became a reality. Only a year after its judges had been sworn in and the prosecutor had been appointed, it started its first investigations, leading in 2006 to the arrest of the first suspect and his subsequent transfer to The Hague, the seat of the Court. The ICC started its first trials in 2008.
