Implementing the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP): Coordinating Approaches Between the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court

To date the only international organisations with a global reach and tasked with responding to atrocity crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court. However, despite their overlapping area of interest, very few mechanisms, one being the UNSC referral of cases to the ICC, have been put in place to coordinate their approaches. With both organisations pursuing different outcomes, protecting civilians on the one hand while pursuing retributive justice on the other, the optimisation of R2P is restricted. This has been effectively highlighted by the African Union and their criticism of the indictment of sitting heads of states. The aim of this chapter is to examine the existing mechanisms in place that coordinate the relationship between the UNSC and the ICC, to critique these mechanisms as advocated by the AU, and to propose possible changes. To achieve this, the chapter examines the respective clauses in the UN Charter and the Rome Statute to highlight the existing basis for coordination and how these may be improved upon to strengthen the RtoP. This analysis is important as surprisingly little research to date examines the interplay between the UNSC and the ICC with barely any discussions taking place on how this may be improved upon. The chapter finds that change will need to come from the ICC side through amendments to the Rome Statute, as reform to the UN is impossible due to the P5 veto. For this reason, it is imperative for African states to remain within the ICC to affect change from the inside.