The International Criminal Court’s Strategies in Relation to Victims

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC or ‘Court’) 2012 Revised Strategy in relation to victims (‘Revised Strategy’) sets out a generally ambitious vision to give effect to the rights of victims in the Rome Statute. However, with an increasing number of complex situations, severe budget pressures and continued uncertainty about the Court’s approach to participation and reparation, the objectives are presented as aspirations and the Strategy is vague on how they will be achieved. Almost five years later, the Revised Strategy has been only partially incorporated into the Strategic Plan of the Court for 2013–2017. Plans to evaluate and update it have been postponed. Despite the committed work of many parts of the Court, it continues to struggle in a number of areas and new challenges have arisen with the triggering of the Court’s reparation mandate in its first cases. This article considers the challenges that the ICC has faced in developing and implementing strategies in relation to victims, and finds that the Court is falling well short of giving effect to the rights of victims in the Statute in all situations and cases. It identifies major gaps in the Court’s strategic approach and makes the case for the Court to urgently develop a new comprehensive and coherent Court-wide strategy applying a reparative justice framework

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