“Slippery Slopes: On Why We Need the ICC”

Peace, reconciliation, and restorative justice: these are the albatrosses that international criminal law (ICL) must (unfairly) bear. Ian Paisley, MP from Northern Ireland and former United Nations and European Union peace envoy, echoes in a New York Times op-ed contribution the aspirations heaped onto the International Criminal Court (ICC). In March, the ICC convicted Thomas Lubanga for war crimes and the conscription of children as soldiers; justice has been done, Paisley claims. Yet the ICC was intended as an instrument of peace, and there is no peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). On this ground he concludes, the ICC has not been a success