June 5, 2016 Manila — Because of a pressing need to prosecute crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria The RINJ Foundation is urging all nations to become full signatories to the Rome Statute and full members of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In particular, Iraq and the United States should rejoin the ICC having left the ICC in 2002 under Saddam Hussein and George Bush, the 2002 leaders of the two countries respectively.
Today the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute is hoped to create a better path for prosecuting crimes against humanity.
The United States is one of the very few nations left out of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
What is needed right now is for both Iraq and the United States to COME BACK and become signatories to this accord. Many other countries that walked away from the ICC at US insistence should do the same thing. The USA left the ICC for no good reason. It was a decision perhaps made in ‘back rooms’ for scurrilous intent to allow for what later became contentious debate about ‘unorthodox methods of waging war’.
The ICC is a permanent international criminal court, (see war-crime) founded in 2002 by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) to “bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst crimes known to humankind war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide”, especially when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.
124 Nation states are members of the ICC. Other countries that have not signed or ratified the Rome Statute include India, Indonesia, and China for obvious reasons-all three countries have serious gender-based violence issues and are fearful of the court.
The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000.
In 2002, the USA, under Pres. George Bush Jr. who planned to go to war, in a position shared with Israel and Sudan, having previously signed the Rome Statute, formally withdrew on May 6 their intent of ratification. Iraq did the same.
The ICC entered into force on 1 July 2002 regardless of the Bush Administration and the Saddam Hussein Regime.
President Obama subsequently re-established a working relationship with the court. This must continue to an unambiguous conclusion.
People of the world may want the USA & Iraq to arrest and surrender to the Court (ICC) any persons, regardless of nationality, charged with committing heinous war crimes against humanity. All of humanity–the world’s ordinary children and their families–is a bigger cause than any single state.
I suggest you the reader ask your political leaders (and candidates) where they stand on this matter. We the people of this planet need to move into a direction that protects children and their families because in many cases our political leaders are not only ignoring the worst crimes against humanity but may even be contributing to those crimes.
Protecting children and their families in the future is something that the ICC and the Rome Statute can help accomplish.
Respectfully,
Micheal John O’Brien – CEO
The RINJ Foundation
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Sidebar
Genocide Emergency
The Future of The Yazidi people is threatened because the female population segment, that group of girls mostly from 9 years to 25 years, has suffered:
- Death by Islamic State murder and by suicide;
- Pregnancies resulting from rape;
- Depression and suicide resulting from rape;
- Physical traumas resulting from horrible abuses and torture;
- Post traumatic stress disorders of a new magnitude;
- Being shunned by their own and larger community;
- Stigma of lost virginity as a secondary trigger for PTSD; and
- Large numbers, many thousands are missing. We believe more than 4,000 in the Mosul area.
Background Reading
- Women & Girls Daily Raped & Killed In Syria & Iraq. (Dec 2012 – Jan 22 2013)
- More Volunteers Needed (June 5, 2014)
- U.N. Plan To Counter Sex Crimes In War (July 11, 2014)
- How To Collect War-Zone Evidence of Sexual Violence (July 21 2014)
- Genocide Emergency – Yazidis (Aug 17, 2014)
- RINJ Is Building an ICC Case Against Each ISIL Rapist (Sep 3, 2014)
- Report A Rape Crime in a War Zone (Sep 11, 2014)
- https://rinj.org/documents/war-crime/ (Read Rome statute July 2002)
- The Plight of The Yazidi People
- Good News For Some Yazidi Women
- Women and Girls are Daily Raped and Killed In Syria.
- Emergency in Northern Iraq
- “Combattants Who Rape“
- “War-Crime Defined“
- The Plight of Yazidi Females in Nineveh Becoming Extreme (March 1, 2015)
- Islamic State Caliphate +Syria +Iraq +KRI = Failed States
- RINJ Foundation Says Iraq Failed To Protect Children – Yazidis (08/31/2015)
- https://rinj.org/documents/sinjar/ (RSAC-Sinjar Doc Repository)
- Pressing Need For USA and Iraq to Rejoin ICC
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