The International Criminal Court and the Trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo

January twenty-sixth of the year 2009, is a very special day. On this day, the first ever trial of the International Criminal Court will be held. Isn't it exciting? For the first time ever, this international group will actually decide not only whether or not to condemn a man, but also whether or not he will be sentenced to death, sent to prison, or found innocent. This is truly historic.

There are, however, a few complaints. You see, the ICC was founded in 2002. Apparently some whiners think that it's first trial should have come a little earlier. Also, there is the fact that he was arrested in 2006. It would seem that a few people are just incapable of realizing how inspirational it is that this trial is going to happen at all rather than simply being pushed off indefinitely.

Unfortunately there is another problem. I happen to be a bit of a whiner myself. As much as I love this modern sensitivity and diplomacy I can't seem to get it out of my head that action and results are a bit more important. Worse yet, it is my suspicion that the majority of hard-working, low-to-middle class people feel the same way. I know it is only a suspicion but it is a very haunting one. How could so many people be trapped in the Dark Ages, isolated from the future of the human race? If my suspicions are right, then that may help explain why they are low-to-middle class people instead of having joined the ranks of the educated and sophisticated upper class.

Whatever the case, the history of the ICC is rich with diplomatic activity. On July seventeenth, 1998, the UN passed the Rome Statute with a vote of 120 to 7 with 21 countries abstaining. The statute called for the formation of the ICC as a group independent of the UN. However, the statute also required that 60 nations ratify it before it became legitimate. While the support for the statute was overwhelming, it was not until April eleventh, 2002 that enough countries actually chose to join such an organization. Already, it was clear that this would be an organization very concerned with diplomacy and due process. Why else would it take four years just for a group of representatives to gain the right to use the name International Criminal Court?

The court chose The Hague, Holland as its headquarters and spent the first few (relatively speaking) months deciding how it was to operate. The swearing in of the ICC officials took place on the same day of its inaugural session on the first of March, 2003.

From then until almost the modern day, the ICC hammered out the fine details and negotiated agreements with the rest of the world in order to make sure it had the right to do its job, a task some backwards people might say should have be unnecessary seeing as how it had already been approved by the UN. The court also made decisions on whether or not certain things were good or bad, like the genocide in Darfur.

Finally, in 2006, the ICC approved an arrest warrant for Thomas Lubanga, who had been imprisoned in 2005 by the Congolese government. Mr. Lubanga was later chosen as the first person ever to be put on trial by the ICC.

Thus, if one counts the first concrete action of the ICC as the final step of its founding and recognition as an international force, it will be found that it took eleven years (1998-2009) for the Rome Statute to become fully approved, ratified, and enacted.

So who is this Thomas Lubanga, this inaugural criminal? Is he a dictator? Did he smuggle nuclear weapons? Does he have his very own terrorist network at his command? Is he someone who will make America, Russia, and China (the three most powerful nations to neglect joining this great diplomatic organization) look up from their disputes, crises, and negotiations to realize that this is a force to be reckoned with? Of course not silly, that might offend someone. There might even be a loss of funding.

Mr. Lubanga is a rebel leader from Congo. He is a monster of a man who has committed all manner of heinous crimes. Yet, some dissatisfied people might say that Africa is a land of heinous crimes, a place where warlords, tyrants, and rebels run rampant. If one thinks of child soldiers, massacres, and endless conflict, Africa is among the first words to come to mind.

The critics may also point out that this man was already arrested. The ICC is not addressing the actual issue of the effects he has had on his people, but simply how to punish him for it. They may say that this is all a mere formality instead of what the ICC was presumably formed for: international action against tyranny. Such critics are fundamentally wrong as they fail to realize that formality is the dog and action is the tail. To think that any action might be made without first the approval of other parties (in this case, nations and international groups), the review of the proper bureaucratic officials, and patient deliberation and debate absurd to sat the least.

These critics also wonder if the ICC will continue to hold trials such as this or if it might at some point reach a decision to take action and intercede in a conflict that has yet to be resolved. Is it possible that it will ever respond to more than the aftermath?

My answer is that patience is a virtue. Perhaps action may be brought to the forefront at some point, but not before diplomacy and sensitivity have facilitated it. The important thing that the ICC remain civil and progressive, anything else is irrelevant. Those who want action are forgetting that respect for action before diplomacy often leads to war among other things. Such an attitude encourages recklessness, creates messes much like what we have in Iraq, and causes the international community to look down on the offender. It simply isn't worth it. Its much better to just scold the powerful and punish the dethroned than to actually intervene. Much more civil. Much better...

Isn't it?