On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president. Vladimir Putinwhom he accused of several war crimes, including the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Although the International Criminal Court does not have a mechanism for enforcing its decisions, member states that recognise its jurisdiction, that is, those who signed the Rome Statutethey are obliged to obey them.
But Putin’s visit to Mongolia, a country that belongs to the International Criminal Court, but where he was received with all the honors by the president Ukhnaa Khurelsukhshowed that, in the real world, the principle of universal justice defended by the Treaty of Rome is subordinate to obvious geopolitical considerations.
Mongolia recognizes the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, but the Russian government has shown that Any commitment of goodwill without an effective sanction mechanism in the event of non-compliance remains a dead letter..
In practice, violations of the Treaty of Rome are punished only by a verbal reprimand, the scope of which is, at best, only reputational. A very minimal cost that Mongolia will gladly pay if the alternative is enmity with a neighboring country as powerful and uncomfortable as Putin’s Russia.
The case of Vladimir Putin is no exception to the rule.
The Dictator Nicolas Madurowho stole the Venezuelan elections of July 28 and entrenched himself in power with the tacit or explicit support of other socialist regimes in the region, or Mohamed bin SalmanSaudi Arabia’s crown prince, accused of organizing the 2018 murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggiare clear examples of the current impunity of tyrants.
The phenomenon is not new. The Nuremberg trials, during which the criminal responsibility of twenty-four senior officials of the Nazi regime was elucidated, were the exception to a rule with few exceptions. To arrive at these judgments, it took a war that cost the lives of between forty and one hundred million human beings. And among them the six million Jews exterminated during the Holocaust.
Putin’s impunity during his visit to Mongolia thus sows doubt about the true scope of international institutions, and in particular that of the International Criminal Court. A scope that seems limited to Western democratic countries which rarely respect the principles and agreements enshrined in the various international treaties..
But if the executive power of these institutions does not reach the countries which, on the contrary, give them more reasons to act, what is the point?
One of the outstanding tasks of the international community in the coming decades will be precisely to organize and impose a system of execution of international law. This means that the Putins, Maduros and Ben Salmans of the future will not benefit from the impunity enjoyed by the current ones..
