When the annual ICC report was launched on the 4th December 2024, it signalled a tumultuous year for ICC prosecutor Khan and his swathe of deputies. This has, admittedly, been unsurprising - the journalists pen does not yet seem to have run out of ink when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or further still those between Ukraine and Russia. And yet, with a record thirty outstanding warrants of arrest, and fifteen 404 communications related to prosecution from the 1st October 2023 to1st October 2024, nobody could have quite expected the degree of litigation 2024 had in store for the ICC - especially given the previous year saw just 1,386 communications. Alongside attempts to “undermine the Court’s work, from public attacks to threats of legal and economic sanctions,” 2024 has not been an easy year for the ICC.
Ukraine and Russia alone created serious litigation, with 2 warrants for the arrest of Lieutenant General Kobylash and Admiral Sokolov placed on the 5 March. The Israel-Palestine conflict too left its usual mark, with 5 arrest warrants on the 20 May related to war crimes. But whilst this may have struck the same chord it did in 2023, it certainly hit a different note. 2024 brought new challenges and with them new solutions. Here, the ICC’s assessment of the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Israel for crimes listed by the report as “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” brought its own nuanced issues.
Pre-existing investigations in Libya, Venezuela, Sudan and countless other regions continued to provide fertile ground for criminal prosecution and thus, maintained trends of previous years. In Darfur Sudan, the ICC built on its existing investigations by engaging more closely with the country - Prosecutor Khan visited Darfuri refugees on their way out of Sudan whilst the ICC continues to narrow down its findings by focusing on Al-Fashir. In Libya too, developments follow earlier patterns. In investigating “2011 violence,” the report directly follows suggestions of the April 2022 report to the UN. But still, 2024 did, at least in part, escape pre-existing trends. On 30 September 2024 Lithuania claimed Belarus committed, as the report notes, “crimes against humanity,” upon Belarus’ citizens living within their border. In doing so, it added a new challenge for the ICC, and a key site of debate going into 2025.
Nevertheless, the ICC has remained steadfast amidst this onslaught of prosecution. Not only has this great office absorbed the high pressure of fifteen, 404 communications but it continues to improve its legal capabilities and ensure its own stability into the future. In launching its Slavery Crimes Policy in December 2024, with “11 hybrid and in-person consultations with 152 participants from at least 51 countries,” the ICC placed itself more closely alongside global needs, and in doing so defined legal boundaries that would be accepted for years to come. 2024 therefore, has seen the ICC work more closely to respect the needs of individual countries, epitomised in its April Policy on Complementarity and Co-operation. This is itself already beginning to take effect through the establishment of an OTP office in Bogotá Columbia. In working with these countries the ICC may further increase both its efficiency and ability to gather evidence. But further still, it encompasses a wider sense of innovation in the ICC that has seen it attempt to tackle every legal issue facing us today - here one only need note the February 2024 ICC pledge against environmental crimes.
