ABSTRACT
When the delegates present at the Rome Conference concluded the negotiations on the adoption of the Rome Statute of the ICC (‘Rome Statute’ or ‘ICC Statute’), 1 on 17 July 1998, few could have envisaged that the permanent ICC (or ‘Court’) would ever become operational. Prosecuting genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes (the ‘core international crimes’) was and continues to be a difficult task. Arguably, few of the delegates, including those involved in the emerging field of international criminal justice, appreciated at the time that what had been achieved at Rome was the creation of a system of international criminal accountability – a system with the ICC at its centre, but where national jurisdictions would be expected to shoulder most of the cases.
