Title of the PhD
The Future of the Crime of Aggression: The Legitimacy of Regional Approaches to its Enforcement.
Research fields/disciplines
Public international law - International criminal law - Human rights law
Abstract
In recent years, various powers have resorted to uses of force that could be categorised as acts of aggression. However, given the International Criminal Court’s limited jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, it has been unable to verify their lawfulness and punish the individuals responsible. Consequently, initiatives have emerged to establish regional criminal courts with this competence, as demonstrated by the African Union’s Malabo Protocol and the Council of Europe’s agreement with Ukraine to set up a special tribunal. These initiatives raise questions of legality, fragmentation and partiality that can be situated under the term legitimacy. As there is no central answer regarding their legitimacy, this research examines if an how regional organisations can legitimately establish a regional criminal court to prosecute the crime of aggression. For this, a concrete and broader applicable legitimacy framework to assess if and how regional criminal courts can be established legitimately, will be developed and both the scope of immunities and the definition of the crime of aggression under customary international law will be examined. In addition to these fundamental contributions, the research will also provide a concrete assessment of the legitimacy of those two examples, which serve as case studies.