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International Criminal Court celebrates tenth anniversary
The tenth anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court will be commemorated on July 1. The text is known as the Rome Statute, since it was adopted in that city in 1998, although it didn't enter into force until 2002, when it received the minimum of 60 ratifications required.
The International Criminal Court was created as an instrument to tackle the impunity of those who commit crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and aggression, and the prosecutor has so far opened seven investigations, all of which are in Africa (Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya and Côte d'Ivoire). At present, 120 states are state parties to the Statute of the Court, but those who aren't include states of great political and economic weight, such as the United States, China, and Russia, and others that stand out due to their demographic weight or their nuclear potential, such as Egypt, India, Israel or Pakistan.
The ICC has just sworn in a new chief prosecutor, the Gambian jurist Fatou Bensouda, who has taken over from Argentinian Luis Moreno Ocampo. She is the first woman to head the organization, in which she has worked since 2004. Formerly, she had been a deputy public prosecutor, Gambian attorney general and justice minister, as well as a senior legal adviser at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.