Talk:States parties to the Rome Statute

Article title

I don't want to change this without discussing it first, but the plural of “state party” is “states parties”, and it's “party to”, not “party of”.

Can we move this page to States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court?

Maybe with redirects from States Parties to the Rome Statute and States Parties to the International Criminal Court?

Sideshow Bob Roberts 03:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Sideshow Bob Roberts 13:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Admitedly this is correct, but the new title sounds a bit unwieldy to me. On the basis that "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for ... a general audience over specialists" can I suggest Member States of the International Criminal Court instead? I'll have a look for other similar articles AndrewRT(Talk) 21:49, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

The only example I could find was List of Kyoto Protocol signatories AndrewRT(Talk) 22:13, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

You're right, the current title is a little unwieldy and it's not immediately obvious what a "state party" is. I don't like it and I'm open to suggestions. As far as I can tell though, "states parties" is the only term in general use.

States don't become "member states" of the ICC (unlike, say, the African Union or the United Nations). If you search the web for the terms "member state" and "International Criminal Court" together [1], it's pretty clear that no-one apart from Wikipedia refers to member states of the International Criminal Court. Regardless of how we feel about the term "states parties", it's not Wikipedia's place to coin a new term.

"Rome Statute signatories" doesn't really work either, since most readers are interested in which states are parties to the statute, rather than which ones have signed it.

"States Parties to the Rome Statute" is an option which is in general use and is less unwieldy than the current title. On the other hand, it doesn't make it clear that the article is about the ICC.

How about "States Parties to the International Criminal Court"? Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:37, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "signatories" doesn't realy work - even the article List of Kyoto Protocol signatories talks about those who have ratified aswell as those who have joined. I still think that if you went up to Joe Public in the street and started talking about "States Parties" he wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about. "Member countries" or "Member states" is more intuitive. This is regularly used for other multilateral organisations like the EU, ASEAN, OECD, CITES, IEA, FAO, IBRD, IADB, European Patent Organisation, UNESCO etc. Google shows up plenty of results for ICC "member countries" - [2], most of which dont relate to wikipedia. Therefore can I change my proposal to Member countries of the International Criminal Court, or do you still prefer state parties? AndrewRT(Talk) 21:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I still prefer states parties but I'm not entirely happy with either and I won't revert if you want to change it.

To sum up, then, we have two proposals:

• "member countries", which is more readily understandable to a general audience, as Wikipedia:Naming conventions demands; and

• "states parties", which is the official term and (as far as I can tell) the only one used by the Court, by the states parties themselves and in the academic literature.

For whatever it's worth, "States parties to the International Criminal Court" returns about 17,300 Google hits, "Member states of the International Criminal Court" gets 9, and "Member countries of the International Criminal Court" gets 3.

The analogy with other institutions like the EU isn't really appropriate because "member states" is the official term used by those institutions, their members, and their founding treaties. The Rome Statute, on the other hand, doesn't refer to "member states", and the Court studiously avoids the term. That's why I wince when I hear it.

How about:

"The states parties to the International Criminal Court (sometimes known as member countries of the International Criminal Court) are those countries that have ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court" ? I suppose that doesn't really resolve the confusion in other articles that link here though. Sideshow Bob Roberts 01:16, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

105 States Parties?

This article and the main ICC article currently state that there are 105 states parties to the Rome Statute. This is not strictly true: Japan acceded to the Statute on 17 July 2007, but the Statute won't enter into force for Japan until 1 October. As such, Japan is not currently a State Party. Crimes committed by Japanese nationals or on Japanese territory before 1 October will not fall under the ICC's jurisdiction (barring, of course, a Security Council referral or a declaration by the Japanese government, etc).

I'm aware that the UN treaties website says there are 105 Parties to the Rome Statute, but this ICC press release is more specific: "On 1st October 2007, when the Statute will enter into force for Japan, the total number of States Parties to the Rome Statute will be 105." Moreover, the ICC's list of States Parties doesn't include Japan.

Can I suggest we reword it to "As of July 2007, 104 states are party to the Rome Statute. Japan will become a state party on 1 October 2007, bringing the total to 105." ?

This might be a little unwieldy (and I might be accused of nit-picking) but I think it's important we get basic figures like the number of states parties correct. Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

That suggested change is fine with me—I made the original change on the International Criminal Court page, which someone picked up on and used to edit the page here, but my original edit was simply based on a news article I read and then I confirmed it through the UN Treaty source, as you said. I didn't look into the matter any deeper. –SESmith 02:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps also the map should be revereted back to the one with an uncolored Japan—or at least the map too should be labeled to indicate these are the state parties as of 1 Oct. –SESmith 02:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted to the original map. Unfortunately, this means we lose all the other changes you've made to the map, but I'm totally clueless about images and I don't know how to change to an uncolored Japan while preserving your other changes. Sorry! Sideshow Bob Roberts 00:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

No, that's fine. We can just change it to the new one I made on 1 Oct. If I can get around to it perhaps I'll do up an interim one, but it would involve reloading a new map, so .... –SESmith 07:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I just put the new map back up without Japan colored. Uncoloring Japan was easier than I thought, so it was no problem. –SESmith 07:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem again. This time, Madagascar's coloured green, though it won't become a state party until 1 June. We should either temporarily change Madagascar back to white or explain clearly in our captions (in each article) that the map shows the states parties as of 1 June 2008 (provided no other country ratifies the treaty before 1 April, etc). I prefer the first option. Sideshow Bob Roberts (talk) 14:29, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Map Error: Chad

Chad is not colored on the map but it is listed as a member in the article, somebody please correct this.

(Chad is above Central African Republic, west of Sudan, below Libya, and east of Niger) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.95.133.192 (talk) 06:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Now done (not by me!) AndrewRT(Talk) 23:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

War crimes out outs

Do we detail anywhere whcih countries have opted out of war crimes jurisdiction? If so this source [3] may be usable Colombia's position. AndrewRT(Talk) 21:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed line about bipartisan consensus in U.S senate against Rome Statute

I removed the following line: There is presently bipartisan consensus that the United States does not intend to ratify the Rome Statute.

My reason for this is threefold:

1. Democrats have 58+ votes in the Senate as of Mar 2009 and when it was put to a vote early on, the vote was 55 to 45 in favor in 1994 (see "SEC. 170A. POLICY WITH RESPECT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT." at http://www.usasurvival.org/ck09.05.07.shtml). Only the need for 66 votes prevented the Rome Statute from getting past the U.S. senate and a majority for the ICC is the opposite of a consensus of anything against it.
2. In 2005, Democratic Policy Committee saw opposition of the ICC as one of the failings of the Bush administration (see "Nominate for U.N. Ambassador a diplomat committed to improving the U.S. relationship with the international community." http://dpc.senate.gov/dpc-new.cfm?doc_name=sr-109-1-15).
3. If the statement didn't say "bipartisan consensus", but perhaps merely "bipartisan representation", it might be able to stay, but to use a strong word like "consensus" without any evidence of the sort, seems dishonest.

--Fandyllic (talk) 03:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. I haven't seen any evidence either way, my instinct (open to persuasion otherwise) is that this is correct, or at least was pre-Obama. There seems to was very little appetite to ratify the treaty - both Clinton and Bush said they didn't want it ratified.

Taking your points in turn:

1. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was only adopted in 1998; support for the principle of the court before the text was agreed is not relevant to whether there exists today support for ratifying the treaty (although it may be relevant to mention on its own)
2. The DPC document ciriticises Bush for "working against the International Criminal Court" - presumably a reference to the withdrawal of military aid to state parties who refused to sign non-surrender agreements; this doesn't mean they support ratification.
3. I take your point about evidence. Hence I'd like to reinstate the clause and add a Template:cn (links, talk) for now. AndrewRT(Talk) 21:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

In order for this statement to stand, what is really needed is a reliable source that states there is such a bipartisan consensus. Otherwise, any analysis is prohibited original research; and the statement should be removed. Squideshi (talk) 22:55, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Cook Islands

Since the Cook Islands are not a sovereign nation (I know they have the right to declare independence if they want, but as of right not they are territory of New Zealand), should they really be listed? I know the term "country" doesn't meant only sovereign nations, but it still seems misleading. 104 "countries" may be members of the ICC, but only 103 sovereign nations. TJ Spyke 02:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi. A reply to your comment is coming late, but better late than never: The Cook Islands is listed as a state party in the UN Treaty Database (and by the ICC). The United Nations consider the Cook Islands as a non-member state after it confirmed its capacity to enter into treaties. So they might not be sovereign to the fullest extent but they have the capacity to enter into the Rome Statute and thus are a state party. --EBB (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

States that didn't ratify Rome Statute & legislation implementation

Should we have a section for it? I don't see one here. Here's an example of a country that didn't do either. [4] Ominae (talk) 08:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Chile

I've reverted this edit, which claims that Chile's ratification of the Rome Statute is "not official". The government of Chile has deposited its instrument of ratification with the UN Secretariat, which is as final and official as it gets. Both the UN and the ICC confirm that Chile has ratified the treaty.[5][6] If anyone wants to claim that the ratification is "not official", please cite a reliable, published source that says so. Polemarchus (talk) 00:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Czech Rep

Media are reporting that Klaus has signed and so they have ratified. Presumably the deposition is imminent. [7] AndrewRT(Talk)(WMUK) 02:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Title

Wouldn’t ‘States Party to…’ be more grammatically plausible than ‘States Parties to…’? Ian Spackman (talk) 11:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

I was about to make the same comment as the above. But as I see he hasn’t been challenged, I’ll move it to the linguistically preferable form. Ian Spackman (talk) 14:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, the problem is that the Assembly of States Parties is denoted exactly that way. So we might want to keep ourselves in line with the Rome Statute. --EBB (talk) 15:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Map

Hi @Zntrip: What is it about Ukraine on this map that you find misleading? It think it is helpful in illustrating the article to depict all the ways that the court can be granted jurisdiction under the Rome Statue. Is your issue the limited window in time in which jurisdiction was granted? Personally I believe that there are several benefits to the svg map, so if you could clarify what the problem is it would be preferential to fix it rather than reverting to the old png. TDL (talk)

I don't think Ukraine should have a special designation on the map for two reasons. The primary reason is that the map's purpose is to show states' status in relation to the Rome Statute, not the Court's jurisdiction. For example, I don't think Libya and Darfur should be shaded a different color on the map just because the Court presumably has perpetual jurisdiction over those territories. The second reason is that it is misleading. The Court's jurisdiction in Ukraine is temporally narrow and the map gives the impression that Ukraine's jurisdctional status is akin to that of a state party. I also want to clarify that I have no problems with the SVG format per se. The only reason I didn't edit the map directly was because I have no idea how to edit SVG files. – Zntrip 15:51, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Citation Incorrect

States_parties_to_the_Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court#United_States indicates that "Some US Senators have suggested that the treaty could not be ratified without a constitutional amendment."; however, the citation does not mention U.S. Senators at all. Squideshi (talk) 22:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Jurisdiction ratione temporis

While it is true that for most States, the effective date of jurisdiction is the date it enters into force for that State, it IS possible that a State may append a declaration accepting Jurisdiction prior to that date as early as July 1, 2002. Given this, wouldn't it be a good idea to add a column to this effect? I would do it unilaterally, but I really don't have the time right now. 36.235.150.99 (talk) 09:05, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

While I know Uganda has extended the jurisdiction ratione temporis by an article 12(3) declaration, I don't believe the Court has ruled on whether states parties can do this since article 12(3) explicitly applies to "a State which is not a Party to this Statute". Nevertheless, I do think it is worth mentioning somewhere in this article. – Zntrip 18:15, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

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April 2023

@Zntrip: In your latest edit, you turned every space into a double space which I don't think you were trying to do, so I've undone it but tried to preserve the actual changes you were trying to make - as far as I can tell, that was adding {{-}} beneath the lead, and changing two instances of {{flag|The Gambia}} to {{flag|Gambia, The}}. Did I miss anything? DanCherek (talk) 20:46, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

@DanCherek: Oh boy, thanks for catching that! I intended to replace existing double spaces with single spaces, not the other way around. Those two changes that you mentioned were the only others. My apologies for the trouble. – Zntrip 21:58, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Palestine

International Criminal Court has ruled that it indeed has authority over crimes committed in Palestine (all of Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem). - Mike Rosoft (talk) 18:41, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

This should be added to Note I, which currently ends by stating that "[...] the court has not made a ruling on the legal validity of this decision."

Given recent news with regards to the ICC's application for arrest warrants against Hamas' and Israel's leaders in the region, this particular edit is urgently needed to reflect the present jurisdictional status of Palestine under the ICC. 2601:645:4000:4FF0:7CEA:BB95:1D3F:20AB (talk) 01:36, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Done. TDL (talk) 02:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Afghanistan quit or not?

There were some reports from Taliban-controlled medias say that Afghan is considering to withdraw their "ratifiction, accession and entry into force status" of Rome Statute, but I don't know whether they can be reliable for indicating here. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 06:30, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Armenia: waiting for UN officials/admins to update their website

Sooner or later the official UN page https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&clang=_en should get updated for Armenia - and then that will be a good source. Boud (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I just reverted the change of Armenia, as it hasn't completed ratification yet. Their internal domestic process may well be completed, but it still needs to formally notify the UN of its acceptance of the treaty for it to become legally binding. Per the source you linked, that hasn't happened yet. We should wait until we have evidence that they have completed their ratification of the treaty. TDL (talk) 17:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

minor page-repair suggestion

Some kind of hyperlink was behind or under the main table in the "States Parties" section, which i accidentally clicked just the last word of and then got what looked like some kind of message-received, or complaint-received or something message, seeing just the end of the word received and the text going green, and then disappearing?

maybe it's only meant to be visible when the table is NOT working, but perhaps the text size, or positioning or something, could be re-aligned to the LEFT HAND column of that line, so that it doesn't end up on the RIGHT, where it appeared to be when i visited tit, and for whatever rendering reasons, i could see it DESPITE the table being visible.

. *shrugs* that's my best guess, anyway. 120.21.43.104 (talk) 17:55, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Add regional column to table or source for regional counts

Depending on who is willing to do the work, I propose that we either (1) add a column to the #States parties table listing which UN Regional Group the country is a member of (with compact abbreviations, e.g. WEOG, EE, ...), or (2) add a table such as the one in #Implementing legislation, or (3) add a source for the counts in the table regional groups table. There might be other reasonable options, but we need at least one option so that the reader can easily verify this without doing a lot of work. (1) or (2) would be best since these would be the easiest to update and maintain.

Evidence of the problem is that right now, for the Asia/Pacific grouping, I see Afghanistan, Bangladesh, East Timor, Fiji, Kiribati(?), Maldives, Mongolia, Marshall Islands(?), Nauru, Samoa, Vanuatu, which is 11, a lot less than 19. Either states are missing from the list of parties, or they're present but I missed them. Other readers are going to do even less effort than this. Boud (talk) 16:54, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Ukraine 7-year caveat

Do we have a proper source to explain the supposed 7-year exclusion for Ukrainians following the 21 August 2024 ratification by Ukraine? I presume that it cannot give immunity in cases where Ukrainians are already within ICC jurisdiction, such as the International Criminal Court investigation in Ukraine or the International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine, but it would be better to have a high-quality source confirming that. Is this a legal error in the Ukrainian law that was just voted? Boud (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Article 124 of the Rome Statute explains this. A future Review Conference could modify it under Art 123.1, but apparently so far that hasn't happened.

The question of whether Art 124 overrides jurisdiction in current investigations such as International Criminal Court investigation in Ukraine would still be useful to answer, based on a legally credible WP:RS. Boud (talk) 19:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

There are several academic pieces that I have seen that address the subject (see here, here, and here). For purposes of this article, I think a general note is sufficient, similar to the one that exists for Colombia and France that simply state that an article 124 declaration was made at the time of ratification. – Zntrip 05:40, 22 August 2024 (UTC)