Zelenskyy introduces bill on Ukraine's membership in International Criminal Court

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has submitted to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) a package of bills concerning the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Source: European Pravda

Details: Draft Bill No. 0285, which has been posted on the Verkhovna Rada website, concerns the ratification of the provisions of the ICC’s Rome Statute by Ukraine, which will ensure Ukraine’s full accession to the ICC.

The bill stresses that Ukraine will ratify the Rome Statute with a provision that, within seven years after the ratification enters into force, "Ukraine will not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over its citizens for crimes under Article 8 of the Rome Statute". It is not yet clear how this provision will work, given that Ukraine has granted the ICC the right to investigate crimes committed on its territory.

Zelenskyy also introduced a separate bill, Bill No. 11484, which provides for the amendment of articles of the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine related to international crimes in accordance with the ICC’s Rome Statute.

Ukraine hopes to accede to the updated version of the ICC statute, which includes Article 8bis, which was introduced as part of the Kampala Amendments in 2010 and provides for liability for the crime of aggression. However, the ratification is retrospective (not retroactive), and the liability does not apply to countries that have not ratified the Kampala Amendments (including Russia, which is not a member of the ICC). Therefore, in order to bring the Russian leadership to justice for the aggression in 2022, Ukraine will continue to work on the creation of a special tribunal.

As of today, 124 states have ratified the ICC’s Rome Statute. China, India, Belarus, Türkiye, and Kazakhstan, among others, have not signed or ratified the statute. Russia, like the United States, signed the statute but later withdrew its signature.

Ukraine signed the Rome Statute back in 2000 but has not ratified it, even though the need for ratification was recognised in 2015 by a decision of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. One of the reasons given was the fear that the ICC could prosecute Ukrainian citizens.

Still, Ukraine granted the ICC the right to investigate crimes on its territory, therefore effectively recognising its jurisdiction.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials talked about the possibility of ratifying the Rome Statute, but only after the end of the full-scale war. In recent months, however, Kyiv has stated that there are no risks of ratifying the Rome Statute sooner.

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