HRC Speaker Series: Professor Dapo Akande

In 2010, the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was amended to include a definition of the crime of aggression and to set out the conditions under which the ICC could exercise jurisdiction over that crime. However, it was also decided to postpone the ICC's jurisdiction over aggression until at least 30 states had ratified the amendments, and until the ICC states parties had taken a decision activating the Court's jurisdiction. ICC States Parties will meet in New York in December 2017 to consider activation of the Court's jurisdiction over aggression. This talk will examine the question of who will be subject to the ICC jurisdiction over aggression. This issue has proved to be contentious in the period since 2010 and the talk will address the diverging legal arguments relating to whether nationals of ICC state parties who do not ratify the 2010 amendments will be subject to prosecution by the ICC for the unlawful use of force.

Professor Dapo Akande is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford where he is also Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC). He is one of the authors of Oppenheim International Law: The United Nations (2017, OUP) and one of the editors of the Practitioners Guide to the Application of Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict (2016, OUP). He was a member of the International Group of Experts that prepared the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations (2017, CUP). He is (or has recently been) a member of the Editorial or Advisory Boards or Councils of several journals and scholarly bodies, including: the American Journal of International Law; the European Journal of International Law; the British Institute of International and Comparative Law; the American Society of International Law; the International Centre for Transitional Justice. He is founding editor of the scholarly blog: EJIL:Talk! the blog of the European Journal of International Law.