The International Criminal Court

The Rome Statute creating a permanent international criminal court was adopted on 17 July 1998 at the United Nations Conference in Rome. This publication is a collective work by a group of persons closely associated with the actual making of the Rome Statute. It covers the substantive and procedural issues raised during the preparatory stages as well as the Conference. These active participants in the Conference provide an account of the main contentions on each of the key issues, the divergent approaches put forward by the principal proponents, how differences were resolved, how groups of articles were prepared, and how the final text as a whole was assembled. All the authors served certain key functions during the Conference, most of them chaired or co-ordinated the work of a committee, a working group or a negotiating body, all of which together produced the Statute. Their professional acount of the work of the Conference makes this publication a resource for any States contemplating ratification and preparing national implementation legislation. This book gives the insiders' reportage of the negotiations that culminated in this momentous Statute.