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OCR
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND EUROPE rigour of Professor Bárd and his colleagues have been tremendously important to maintaining standards and ensuring that as certain political trends which have shown disrespect for those standards have sought to undermine these traditions, their legacy will be short lived. INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND EUROPE 1he International Criminal Court, established by the Rome Convention in 1998, was also a development arising, inter alia, from the concern of impunity for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome Convention in 1998 was, inter alia, a response to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Europe in the 1990s. The wars in the Former Yugoslavia had given rise to a specific criminal tribunal to deal with the risk of impunity of the leaders and the weakness of national judiciaries. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia which existed between 1993-2017 laid the groundwork for public acceptance of the principle of international criminal justice for leaders engaging in international crimes. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was of course the other key event which pushed the international community to set up the ICC. It is worth bearing in mind that when the Rome Convention was being drawn up, it was also with Europe in mind. Sometimes commentators at 20 years distance express surprise that European states and institutions might be in the ICC prosecutor’s spotlight as the debate has frequently revolved around leaders of African states.” However, Europe has been a continent where international criminal justice is necessary to complement national systems and ensure that leaders are unable to give themselves immunity from their participation in international crimes. Ihis continues to be the case. The case study I will examine below highlights the importance of international criminal justice systems, a subject on which Professor Bard was most influential. EU BorRDER CONTROLS, LIBYA AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY On 2 June 2019, two law professors at Sciences-Po, Paris, Omer Schatz and Juan Branco, submitted a 244 page communication to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting that she investigate crimes against 3 Lucrecia Garcia lommi, Whose justice? The ICC ‘Africa problem’, International Relations 34 (2020), 105-129.Brendon Cannon — Dominic Pkalya — Bosire Maragia, The international criminal court and Africa: Contextualizing the anti-ICC narrative, African Journal of International Criminal Justice 2 (2016), 6-28. «77 «
