The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent, independent international tribunal and judicial body, seated in The Hague, Netherlands, established to prosecute individuals for the most serious crimes of international concern. Its origin lies in the multilateral treaty known as the Rome Statute, which was adopted on July 17, 1998, and entered into force on July 1, 2002, after receiving 60 ratifications. The ICC was created to solve the problem of impunity for mass atrocities, moving beyond the temporary nature of ad hoc tribunals like those for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The ICC's core mechanism is the principle of complementarity, meaning it is a court of last resort that can only exercise jurisdiction when national courts are genuinely unwilling or unable to prosecute. It has jurisdiction over four core international crimes: genocide (Article 6), crimes against humanity (Article 7), war crimes (Article 8), and the crime of aggression (Article 8 bis). Investigations can be triggered by a State Party referral, a referral from the United Nations Security Council (under Article 13(b)), or by the Prosecutor acting proprio motu.
The ICC is distinct from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is a UN organ that settles legal disputes between states, whereas the ICC prosecutes individuals. A significant recent change was the activation of jurisdiction over the crime of aggression on July 17, 2018, following an amendment adopted at the 2010 Kampala Review Conference. Another amendment in 2015 deleted Article 124, which had allowed new State Parties to temporarily opt out of the Court's war crimes jurisdiction. India is not a State Party to the Rome Statute.