Article 18 : preliminary rulings regarding admissibility

This provision was proposed for inclusion into the Rome Statute as Article 11bis (Preliminary rulings regarding admissibility) during the last PrepCom proceedings – less than four months before the Rome Statute was finalised – at the urging of the United States. It was included in the Preparatory Committee Draft 1998 and repositioned as Article 16 without substantive alteration. The ILC Draft Statute 1994 did not contain anything like it, since it did not provide for an independent Prosecutor with the power to initiate investigations proprio motu. Under the ILC Draft Statute 1994, only States and the UNSC could trigger the jurisdiction of the Court.4 Only after it became apparent, during the PrepCom and at the Rome Conference, that a majority of States favoured an independent Prosecutor with proprio motu powers, was the provision introduced as a check on the Prosecutor’s powers