Interpretation of the Kampala Amendments - One of the Key Issues for Activating the Jurisdiction of the ICC over the Crime of Aggression
![handle is hein.journals/jladsc7 and id is 175 raw text is:
Journal of Law and Administrative Sciences
No.7/2017
INTERPRETATION OF THE KAMPALA AMENDMENTS - ONE
OF THE KEY ISSUES FOR ACTIVATING THE JURISDICTION
OF THE ICC OVER THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION
Associate Professor Ion GALEA, PhD.
University of Bucharest
ion.galea@drept.unibuc.ro
Abstract:
This study proposes an overview over one of the most contentious questions of interpretation linked to the
Kampala Amendment on crime of aggression. The question concerns whether whether the ICC would have
jurisdiction in case of an alleged act of aggression commited by a State Party to the Rome Statute which
has not ratified/accepted the Kampala Amendment against the territory of a State Party which has
ratified/accepted the Amendment. The study exposes the two opposite views and tries to identify the correct
question. Moreover, a very brief assesment of the interpretative approach is provided.
Keywords: International Criminal Court, crime of aggression, jurisdiction, State consent, Kampala
Amendment
Introduction
Seven years have passed since the Kampala Conference adopted, by consensus,
the package on the crime of aggression[1] . The consensus was not easy to reach: the
push for the final result, surrounded with emotions, was reached in the early morning of
Saturday, 12 June 2017, at. 00:20 hours[2] . The main difficulty related to the crime of
aggression was not necessarily its definition per se, but designing the jurisdictional
mechanism of the ICC over it, for the following reason: unlike the other crimes within the
jurisdiction of the ICC (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity), the crime of
aggression is necessarily the crime of a State. It cannot exist in the absence of State
responsibility.
If one reads the definition of the crime of aggression as provided by article 8 bis of
the Statute, as amended by the Kampala Amendment: the planning, preparation,
initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to
direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its
character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United
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