ICC Opinion-Grant Voytovich

Grant Voytovich

POLS Paper

3/9/2022


I thought that Elena Baylis’s argument about the International Criminal Court was the most convincing.  She talked about the weaknesses of the International Criminal Court, which were noncooperation from states like Kenya, concerns with their investigations, and the difficulty of investigating crimes in locations that might not be safe.  I think that the point that I agreed with the most was that it is nearly impossible for an organization, like the ICC, to monitor all of the crimes going on around the world.  This is a concern with tons of International Organizations; it is very difficult for them to be the middle ground, and assist every country that is involved.  They are in charge of a job that seems to be nearly impossible, and is almost always criticized.  If you look at an international organization like the World Bank, they are in charge of ensuring that all countries involved are well off financially, and have to provide loans for the countries that need it.  The World Bank is involved with 187 countries that all likely needed assistance at some point in time.  They have to assist the countries in need at the right time, or else something bad may happen.  They are playing a role that is very difficult to excel at.  Baylis also mentions that we should give more power to national and regional courts, so that they can be put in charge of the crimes that happen on their soil.  She states that the ICC is over extended, and that they haven’t been able to fully investigate every crime that has become available to them.  Like every other international organization, this is their biggest flaw.  Baylis also says that the ICC was never meant to be in charge of these crimes, they were meant for the national courts instead.  If we put national courts in charge of crimes that happen in their area, then they will be able to fully investigate these crimes, and the process will be a lot more efficient.  I think that the ICC should be a safety net for the national courts, so that way every case gets investigated properly.  The ICC will play the limited role that it was originally supposed to play, and everything will be more efficient. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Currency Manipulation of the 21st Century: China and the US

                           Currency Manipulation of the 21st Century: China and the US Now more than ever, countries feel tempted to engage in a ‘currency war’ and go back and forth trying to devalue their currency in efforts to encourage exports. The two largest economies, China and the United States, seem to be in a long, bitter trade dispute as the trade relationship is significantly imbalanced. From tariffs to currency, trade tensions are clearly escalating with both sides slapping substantial tariffs on each other’s goods. Currency manipulation (arguably the world’s most protectionist international economic policy) refers to the concept of countries artificially lowering the value of their currency to achieve an unfair competitive advantage (Forbes). The U.S. Dollar is the most popular reserve, and everyone wants a stake in our economy. Unlike many other countries, China does not ha...
Read more

Kevin Yin's Blog #5

  To be honest, it has been a long time for me – a Chinese social media and news reader, not hearing any information about the follow-up of the Ukraine and Russia crisis on Chinese websites. Yes, you can’t find a lot of information about the invasion on Chinese news websites. If you do, then the news may be connected with the following reaction of European countries towards Russia, like the sanctions and changes in foreign policies. Some of the news writers did actually defame some of Ukrainian Defiance for some bad activities. It is quite clear for other people to understand the attitude of China towards the crisis. How about other Asian countries? Although I don’t want to be mean at this point, I have to indicate that the attitudes of many “second-tier power” countries are not that genuine. If we rationally consider the situation and the nature of politics, we must admit that it is not clever to think in either only a humanitarian angle or only a political angle. We need to comb...
Read more

Ciara: blog post #5

  The fear of an action might be powerful enough to scare off another party, or cause them to fear the lengths others are willing to go. As Kenneth Waltz argues in “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability” allowing more countries to obtain nuclear defense would put international relations at a general deterrence from the nuclear wars that could start. Deterrence is a strategy that can be used in order to prevent another party from undertaking an action through coercion. Many times this works as a method to keep two parties from destroying each other, or to allow a smaller army to scare off a larger one to show the lengths they would go. Nuclear deterrence can be the ultimate way of scaring off other parties as it is the strongest weapon that could potentially cause complete destruction. Even if a nuclear power is relatively small and compared to other nuclear powers would seem less threatening, once they cross the threshold they are using deterrence (Wa...
Read more