Jo Stigen, The Relationship between the International Criminal Court and National Jurisdictions

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally became operational in 2002, the general public thought that impunity for international crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide was a thing of the past. The ICC was seen as a world court, which would bring justice to those who were most deprived of it. However, six-and-a-half years later, reality is a little less rosy: only one trial has commenced, other trials are still in the investigative phase, no verdicts in a major trial have been rendered, and no victims have received reparations. More importantly though, more often than not alleged crimes committed by state parties to the ICC Statute are not investigated by the Prosecutor of the ICC at all. One of the reasons for this lies in the rules laid down in Article 17 of the Statute. Article 17 stipulates at what moment and under which circumstances proceedings before the ICC would prevail over the initiation of criminal proceedings within national systems of state parties. Close reading of this article leads one to conclude that the main canon regarding jurisdiction of the ICC is that national proceedings prevail over international proceedings. It is only when a state party is unable or unwilling genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution, that the ICC has jurisdiction given the case is of sufficient gravity to justify action by the Court

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