Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 97

the ECLJ to support it and furthermore, there is nothing expansive when the jurisdiction is well-established
within the Rome Statute under Article 12 (2) (a).
Secondly, the latter point is an adversarial statement made by the ECLJ that if the Court proceeds
with the investigation then there will be consequences. Again, with no evidence or any actual legal
arguments made to support it, the statement is just that, a statement. Nevertheless, it must be stressed
that in addition to working with States Parties, the Court does work with non-State Parties and this is
encouraged when the situation dictates it. Furthermore, any efforts to take ‘additional actions’ and to
‘hamper’ the ability of the Court to perform its role will only ever embolden the Court, enhance its
legitimacy and underscore its efforts to end impunity and prevent atrocity crimes. The current US
administration and ECLJ do not appear to recognise this fact.
Nevertheless, the ECLJ defiantly broadens out these arguments with the following:
‘Because we live in an imperfect world and because the ICC is a court of limited jurisdiction, real
world realities must always be taken into account by both the OTP and the various chambers of
judges to maximize the attainment of justice for the greatest number of people’ 45 .
This is a position that is challenged by fellow NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch who have documented that such a utilitarian argument does not seem to compute with the effects
of the conflict in Afghanistan as over a hundred thousand people have been killed and millions internally
displaced over the period of the conflict 46 . Thus, this only furthers the argument in favour of the ICC
investigation as it demonstrates that there is an incredible volume of people who require some form of
stability, rule of law and justice. However, whether this should be in the form of an ICC investigation is
unclear but what is clear is that any alleged crimes that may have been committed cannot go unpunished.
Thus, as one can see over the course of the ECLJ submission, there is no attempt to put forward
any meaningful legal arguments as was present within the submission of the FCPAHT. Furthermore, even
when there appears to be some hope for the submission to show the slightest credibility, this is
45
supra n. 23.
“Afghanistan 2017/2018”, Amnesty.org, accessed 29 November 2019,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/afghanistan/report-afghanistan/; “Afghanistan:
Events of 2018”, HRW.org, accessed 29 November 2019, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-
chapters/afghanistan; Neta C. Crawford, “Update on the Human Costs of War for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001
to mid-2016”, Costs of War (August 2016): 1.
46
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