Successes and Failures of the ICC
An honest assessment of what the ICC has achieved in its first two decades and where it has fallen short.
What the ICC Has Achieved
In its first two decades the ICC built a body of landmark convictions that did not exist in international law before. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo became the Court's first convicted person in 2012, found guilty of conscripting and using child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Germain Katanga was convicted in 2014 for crimes committed at Bogoro. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi was convicted in 2016 for the destruction of cultural and religious heritage in Timbuktu, Mali, the first ICC case built primarily around cultural-property crimes. Bosco Ntaganda was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to 30 years, the Court's longest sentence, for crimes including rape and sexual slavery. Dominic Ongwen, a former Lord's Resistance Army commander, was convicted in 2021.
Beyond individual verdicts, the ICC changed behavior. The threat of investigation has encouraged national prosecutions (positive complementarity) in places such as Colombia and Guinea, and military commanders now weigh ICC liability in operational planning. The 2023 arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin over the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine showed the Court's willingness to name a sitting head of a major power. The mere existence of a permanent court has made impunity less automatic than it once was.
