SADC and the International Criminal Court: Maximixing the Complementarity Principle

Abstract

In terms of the Rome Statute, State parties enjoy the primary jurisdiction to prosecute perpetrators of international crimes and state parties have a duty to implement the Rome Statute in order to be able to exercise their criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.This paper looks at implementation of the Rome Statute in SADC states. While many SADC states have ratified the Rome Statute most of these countries have not implemented the Statute. First, the paper identifies some of the challenges that act as barriers to SADC countries implementing the Rome Statute. Second,the paper argues that SADC countries and the international community stand to benefit from implementation of the Rome Statute by state parties. At the end, the paper makes recommendations of how SADC countries can be enabled to implement the Rome Statute. It is argued that 'proactive complementarity' can be used as one of the effective tools to deal with these challenges.