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INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE Campaigning for an effective system of international justice to ensure justice, truth and full reparations for crimes under international law: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. Amnesty International campaigns for all countries to establish an effective system of international justice at the international and national level to act as a deterrent to those planning the worst crimes known to humanity: • genocide • crimes against humanity • war crimes • torture • extrajudicial executions • enforced disappearances The system must ensure that states take effective steps to prevent these crimes and to respond effectively when they are committed by: • Ensuring justice: investigating all such crimes and, when there is sufficient admissible evidence, prosecuting the suspects in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty, torture or ill-treatment; or extraditing suspects to states able and willing to do so; or surrendering them to an international criminal court; and • Ensuring truth: establishing and acknowledging the facts about the crimes; and • Ensuring full reparation: taking effective measures to address the suffering of victims and their families caused by the crimes and to help them rebuild their lives To achieve this system of international justice, it is vital that national authorities fulfill their responsibilities. When they fail to do so, authorities of other countries exercising universal jurisdiction and/or the International Criminal Court and/or other international or internationalized courts should step in to investigate and prosecute the crimes on behalf of the international community to ensure that there is no impunity. Accordingly, Amnesty International campaigns for: • Governments worldwide to carry out national law reform to ensure that national justice systems can investigate and prosecute crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances if they occur. • Governments of countries where crimes have been committed to establish long-term, comprehensive plans of action to ensure justice in national courts, to provide full and effective reparations to victims and to establish the truth about such crimes. • All governments to enact and implement laws providing national courts with universal jurisdiction over such crimes. Such laws should enable national courts to investigate and prosecute crimes under international law and award reparations to victims regardless of where the crime was committed or the nationality of the accused or the victim. • All states to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the International Criminal Court to ensure that the Court has the broadest jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the crimes when national authorities are unable or unwilling genuinely to do so. • The international community to ensure that international and internationalized courts are able to investigate and prosecute crimes effectively in situations where national authorities are unable or unwilling genuinely to do so and the International Criminal Court either does not have jurisdiction or has decided not to exercise it. • The International Criminal Court and other international and internationalized criminal courts to investigate and prosecute the crimes in accordance with the highest standards of international justice and to act as a catalyst for national courts to investigate and prosecute the crimes they are unable to. All governments and inter-governmental organizations to support and cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court and other international and internationalized courts.
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