The Capacity of the International Criminal Court to Fight Human Trafficking

Abstract

ABSTRACT The ongoing war in Ukraine has again highlighted the link between conflict and trafficking in persons, especially refugees. Despite the understanding that trafficking in human beings in the context of armed conflict (and sometimes even outside of it) can amount to an international crime, both research and anti-trafficking policies tend to view trafficking as a (trans)national phenomenon. As a result, the potential of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a permanent international criminal tribunal tasked with adjudicating perpetrators of international crimes, to contribute to the fight against human trafficking remains largely neglected in current discourses. To fill this gap and, at the same time, facilitate efforts to build an effective and sustainable capacity to combat human trafficking at the (trans)national and international levels (UN Sustainable Development Goal 16), this article has two objectives. First, it examines the ICC’s procedural capacity to combat human trafficking, focusing on its support for domestic investigations and prosecutions and the requirements for effectively transferring prosecutions to the international level. Second, it analyzes the substantive requirements for qualifying human trafficking as an international crime for purposes of effective prosecution at the ICC in light of recent jurisprudence, especially the Ongwen case.