The Role of the UN Security Council vis-à-vis the International Criminal Court – Resolution 1970 (2011) and its Challenges to International Criminal Justice

On February 26 2011, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1970 referring the situation concerning Libya to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Th is unprecedented support for and acknowledgment of the ICC did not come without a price: conditio sine qua non for Council members not party to the ICC was the inclusion of operative § 6 into the resolution, which exempts certain categories of nationals of non-parties from ICC jurisdiction. Th e same highly controversial exemption was included in the Security Council’s referral of the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005. Deviating from the Rome Statute’s jurisdiction regime such practice not just poses challenges to principles of international criminal justice but raises the question whether the Rome Statute is altered by the resolution containing the referral to the effect that the ICC is being bound to the exemptions contained in its exercise of jurisdiction. Addressing these issues, the present paper elaborates firstly on the jurisdictional exemption of § 6 and its effect on the ICC, followed by a discussion of resulting challenges to the principle of legality, the principle of universal jurisdiction for international crimes, the equality of individuals before the law and the principle of independence of the court.