The States’ Duty of Cooperation before the International Criminal Court

Abstract

Since 2002, the State parties of the Rome Statute are obliged to cooperate with the Court and to take diligence to approve internal laws and rules to determine how this cooperation would happen. That is crucial for the effectiveness of the Court, avoiding international impunity and achieving justice. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the cooperation between states and the Court and how it is constructed. To do that, we divided this study in two main parts. In the first one, we emphasize the history of the Court. The second one deals with the core of this paper, which is the cooperation between states and the Court. We performed bibliographic research on the Rome Statute and international cooperation and adopted the deductive method combined with the historical method, starting from an analysis of the research. We aimed to explain the content of the premises logically constructed and true, as they are based on the specific legislation of the International Criminal Court. They are also based on international documents and the doctrine, of which we performed a literature review for the argumentative construction. In conclusion, the principle of complementarity is the main obstacle to good cooperation. We also noticed that most states do not have a special law that deals with the cooperation between the state and the Court.