Written by Ronald Rogo, rogo.ronald@gmail.com

Although the waging of aggressive war was once described as “the supreme international crime, , differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”[1], the treatment of the crime of aggression by the international community barely reflects this primacy. for years there has been little disguise of the lack of enthusiasm by the international community towards this offence.

First, while the other international crimes immediately came into effect with the Rome Statute[2], the crime of aggression is currently not enforceable[3]. Initially the reason was that there was no definition of the offence[4] or explicit averment on the jurisdiction of the ICC[5]. While the Kampala Review Conference[6] was finally able to nail down a definition for the crime of aggression, it took away with the other hand. The world still has to wait until 2017 for a second review conference in order for the State Parties to finally determine whether or not they really want to keep this offence. Essentially this means that the world will have to wait until then to decide whether or not prosecuting the “supreme international crime” is worth the effort! Viewed from the prism of domestic law making this is certainly NOT the way to make law[7]. Meanwhile, state leaders can continue bombing each other to extinction without fear of any repercussions for such actions (so long, of course, as they keep away from the other international crimes).

But even after the ICC starts exercising jurisdiction over the ICC the situation does not get rosier. The amendments in the Kampala review conference provided that state parties can elect whether or not to be bound by the provisions relating to the crime of aggression[8]. This is akin to telling a kleptomaniac to choose whether or not he wants to follow laws forbidding theft! As Kevin Heller stated of course it is to be expected that the aggressor states will all elect not to be bound by these provisions on the crime of aggression[9]. The states that actually choose to be bound by them will be the ones least likely to engage in acts of aggression. So, in effect, we would end up with a statute that could be analyzed to extinction in the academic halls (and, might I add, blogs on ICL) but with little practical effect.

Perhaps the main reason why there have been so many barriers in the implementation of the crime is because, unlike the other offences, it targets state leaders. State leaders, no matter what they say, want  the liberty to bombard other states in order to pursue their “national interests”. So then the question remains: if our leaders do not want to be tied down by the rigours of the law why should the citizenry?  Lastly, since crimes against humanity and war crimes are common during wars it is unlikely that we would stamp these out unless we deal firmly with part of the underlying cause: acts of aggression. Our determination “to put an end to impunity…and contribute for the prevention of these crimes”[10] will remain a mere wish list.