Med evne og vilje til å være upartisk? En analyse av den internasjonale straffedomstolens legitimitet ved behandlingen av anmodningene om etterforskning i Uganda og Sudan

This master thesis explores preconditions for the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The foundations for the Court's legitimacy will be investigated by researching the selection process in two cases currently being processed by the ICC. Those are the investigations into the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda, and the janjaweed-militia in the Sudanese Darfur region. Using a qualitative approach, I evaluate the criticism of the work of the ICC in the two cases in order to see whether the investigations can be said to have been biased. However, my findings suggest, in the Uganda case, that institutional weaknesses in the Statute of the ICC have raised concerns over the possibility of politicized referrals to the Court by its member states, thereby invoking an ICC investigation that indirectly contributes to a politicized investigation. In the Darfur case, respectively, the evolving and unsettled legal relationship between the UN Security Council and the ICC creates tension over the investigation's legal mandate, its jurisdiction, and its financial base. The ICC is established as a permanent Court, and its effects on international relations and its quest for legitimacy must therefore be viewed in a long-term perspective