Talk:Cases before the International Criminal Court

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Contents 1 Lebanon 2 Summary table 3 New layout suggestion 4 Proposal to split article

[edit] Lebanon

Should Lebanon be included here? I say yes. This article includes a brief mention of all potential cases where these have been mentioned by prominent media outlets as posible prosecutions. There are plenty of examples - cited in the article - of prominent politicians who have called on the ICC to prosecute over Lebanon. AndrewRT - Talk 20:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Lebanon is not a signator of the ICC (nor is Israel). The title of the article is "Cases before the International Criminal Court". It is wishful thinking, and misleading, to put Lebanon or Israel in this article. If the article were "Cases some people wish were before the ICC", then it would be appropriate. I removed the Lebanon section after only a quick review. Perhaps I need to look more closely... BTW, Amnesty International today released a report accusing Hezbollah of war crimes. If you're going to push for Lebanon's inclusion, I hope mention is made of that, though for the same reasons I have stated, I don't think that either is appropriate for this particular article. Crockspot 20:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Since the section has been added back in, I went ahead and added the AI blurb at the end. Also made a very minor POV/undue weight adjustment. But like I said, the entire section should not be here. Crockspot 21:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Summary table

How about putting something like this in the lead section?

Summary of investigations and prosecutions by the International Criminal Court (as of June 2007)

Situation	Referral (date)	Investigation opened	Arrest warrants issued	Arrest made	Trial commenced	Verdict
Northern Uganda	Government of Uganda (December 2003)	July 2004	Joseph Kony Vincent Otti Raska Lukwiya Okot Odiambo Dominic Ongwen	X X X X X	X X X X X	X X X X X
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)	Government of the DRC (March 2004)	June 2004	Thomas Lubanga	17 March 2006	X	X
Central African Republic (CAR)	Government of the CAR (December 2004)	May 2007	X	X	X	X
Darfur, Sudan	UN Security Council (March 2005)	June 2005	Ahmed Haroun Ali Kushayb	X X	X X	X X

It's not pretty but I think it conveys a lot of useful information at a glance. What think ye? Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:41, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I know the table needs work (it's just dawned on me that it doesn't reflect the fact that Raska Lukwiya's dead) but I'd like to know if people think the table's a bad idea in principle before I fiddle with it any further. Sideshow Bob Roberts 01:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks excellent thanks for this! AndrewRT(Talk) 21:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Take out the X's, X usually means not applicable. Just leave blank instead. 199.125.109.54 01:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New layout suggestion

The article is currently laid out as follows:

   * 1 Arrests made
         o 1.1 Democratic Republic of Congo
               + 1.1.1 Lubanga
               + 1.1.2 Other cases
               + 1.1.3 Allegations
   * 2 Public indictments issued
         o 2.1 Uganda - Lord's Resistance Army
         o 2.2 Darfur, Sudan
   * 3 Investigations commenced
         o 3.1 The Central African Republic
   * 4 Other referrals
         o 4.1 Cote d'Ivoire
   * 5 Other complaints received
         o 5.1 State Parties
               + 5.1.1 Burundi
               + 5.1.2 Colombia
               + 5.1.3 Georgia
               + 5.1.4 Iraq
               + 5.1.5 South Africa
               + 5.1.6 Venezuela
         o 5.2 Non State Parties
               + 5.2.1 Bhutan
               + 5.2.2 Iran
               + 5.2.3 Israel
               + 5.2.4 Lebanon
               + 5.2.5 Somalia
               + 5.2.6 Sri Lanka
               + 5.2.7 Thailand
               + 5.2.8 Zimbabwe
   * 6 Prosecutions under complementarity
         o 6.1 Germany
         o 6.2 United Kingdom
   * 7 References

I understand that the purpose of this is to make the status of each situation clear to the reader, but it strikes me as unnecessarily clumsy and difficult to follow. It will also require a lot of maintenance, moving sections around almost every time a warrant is issued or an arrest is made. I suggest something along these lines:

   * 1 Active investigations
         o 1.1 Northern Uganda
         o 1.2 Democratic Republic of the Congo
         o 1.3 Central African Republic
         o 1.4 Darfur, Sudan
   * 2 Other complaints received
         o 2.1 Complaints concerning states parties
               + 2.1.1 Burundi
               + 2.1.2 Colombia
               + 2.1.3 Georgia
               + 2.1.4 Iraq
               + 2.1.5 South Africa
               + 2.1.6 Venezuela
         o 2.2 Complaints not concerning states parties
               + 2.2.1 Bhutan
               + 2.2.2 Cote d'Ivoire
               + 2.2.3 Iran
               + 2.2.4 Israel
               + 2.2.5 Lebanon
               + 2.2.6 Somalia
               + 2.2.7 Sri Lanka
               + 2.2.8 Thailand
               + 2.2.9 Zimbabwe
   * 3 Prosecutions under complementarity
         o 3.1 Germany
         o 3.2 United Kingdom
   * 4 References

Any objections? Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

The new layout looks a lot better. You're right, I was ending up tying myself in knots! AndrewRT(Talk) 21:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to split article

For an article called "Cases before the International Criminal Court", I think we're focusing a bit too much on complaints received, many of which are absurd and have no hope of ever actually being investigated by the ICC. How about splitting this into two articles?

• International Criminal Court situations - covering situations where the Court has actually opened an investigation (and maybe situations that have been formally referred to the Court)
• Complaints to the International Criminal Court - outlining the complaints process and discussing individual complaints

(I'm not entirely sure where the current "National proceedings under complementarity" section would fit into this new structure but I guess we could add it to the States Parties article.)

Bad idea? Sideshow Bob Roberts (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I think there's some merit in the idea. The focus of the article should certainly be on live cases, and there could be grounds for going into more detail if editors want to and there are reliable secondary sources to support. Of course thsi section will get longer as more people are tried, convicted, arrested and investigated.

Personally I think the complaints section is fascinating, if secondary, because it gives a view on how people view the court around the world (and indeed many of the misconceptions that are out there!) and also how selective the court prosecutor is being in terms of the cases he chooses to investigate. I like having the complaints sections very compact because, as you noted, many of them have "no hope of ever actually being investigated by the ICC", so I would want to keep to a sentence or two and a reference. I worry that having a separate article will lead it to being too long, and I could see editors arguing for inclusion of cases where complaints have been made but there would never be any possibility of investigation (e.g. where the complaint was pre-2002). The other danger is that the subject matter could be challenged under the notability rules (have any publications reviewed complaints to the ICC?).

Overall, subject to the notability concerns being ok, I would probably agree with your proposal, but I would suggest we keep the current article name for the first article (I find "situations" a bit too jargonistic), reduce the section "other complaints received" to a couple of paragraphs and have a link using the {{main}} template to a new sub-article perhaps called Complaints to the International Criminal Court.

Complementarity proceedings are, I think, very important, and you could find in the future that the ICC has as much or more impact through these that in direct trials. Hence I would like to keep this in this family of articles. As the section is currently so small I suggest we keep in the first article - perhaps branching out as a sub article if it gets bigger.

How does that sound? AndrewRT(Talk) 23:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I've done as you suggested, let me know what you think. This is how it looks now:

• Cases before the International Criminal Court covers those situations where the court has formally opened an investigation, and national proceedings under complementarity.
• Complaints to the International Criminal Court outlines the complaints process and lists specific complaints. (I've started a discussion at Talk:Complaints to the International Criminal Court about which complaints should be included)

Now that the litany of complaints is gone, I think we have the opportunity to turn Cases before the International Criminal Court into a pretty good article. Sideshow Bob Roberts (talk) 04:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)