Planned amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution to bring it into compliance with the Statute of the International Criminal Court

Specialists of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine have prepared a Draft Law “On introducing amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine” in connection with the future ratification of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “Interfax-Ukraine” reports.

This information was given by Elena Zerkal, the head of the state department in charge of questions of adaptation of legislation.

According to her words, now the work is carried out for introduction of necessary changes into the corresponding normative-legal acts.

The agreement on the creation of permanent International criminal court was signed by 120 countries-members of the UNO in July 1998 in Roma, during the Diplomatic conference under the aegis of the UNO. On the same day the countries also approved the statute of the court – the Roman Statute.

Ukraine signed the Statute on 20 January 2000. The agreement took effect on 1 July 2002.

Zerkal tells that the court has the competence to try not states, but citizens for various serious crimes, which arouse anxiety of the international community. An individual can be brought to responsibility for a military crime, an outrage upon humanity, aggression and genocide.

The head of the department has pointed out that this international organ has jurisdiction only over the crimes committed after July 2002, that is after coming of the Statute into force.

The court considers the cases, where one or two sides are the states-participants and the accused is a citizen of a state-participant.

The court also realizes its jurisdiction in the cases, where the crime has been committed on the territory of a state-participant, or where a state, which is not a participant of the statute, decides to acknowledge jurisdiction of the court concerning a concrete crime committed on its territory or by its citizen.

Zerkal also emphasized that jurisdiction of the court did not replace the national jurisdiction, but only supplemented it. The international organ would function only if national courts would not be able or ready to realize their jurisdiction, otherwise the court has no right to interfere except for the cases passed to the it by the UNO Security Council.

The Roman Statute establishes the real international system of criminal justice for the purpose of observance of laws and impartiality in consideration of cases.

The Statute has several peculiar advantages. First of all, these are control mechanisms, meant for protection of innocent people from the ungrounded, malevolent and politically motivated criminal investigations and court persecutions.

By now the Roman statute is signed by 139 countries and ratified by 99.

14 September 2005

Translated from http://korrespondent.net/main/130607