The Rome Statute Created the World's First Permanent War-Crimes Court
On this day · 17 July 1998
After decades of false starts, 120 nations voted in Rome to build a standing court that could try the gravest crimes against humanity.
On 17 July 1998, delegates meeting in Rome adopted the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The vote came at the close of a five-week diplomatic conference and passed by an overwhelming 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining.
The idea of a permanent international tribunal had circulated since the Nuremberg trials, but Cold War rivalries kept it stalled for half a century. The statute finally gave the world a standing court rather than the temporary tribunals improvised for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
For the first time, individuals — not just states — could be held to account before a permanent court of last resort.
The treaty grants the ICC jurisdiction over four core crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The court is a last resort, acting only when national courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute. The statute needed 60 ratifications before it took effect, a threshold reached in 2002, when the Hague-based court formally began its work.
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