THE REPRESENTATION OF GOVERNMENTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT – A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EGYPT SITUATION, THE CAR SITUATION II AND THE PALESTINE SITUATION

Abstract: One distinguishing feature of the current international security situation is that conflicts shift from those between States to those within a State. This leads to a circumstance under which several authorities co-exist within a State. In the International Criminal Court, the recent situations in the Arab Republic of Egypt and in the Central African Republic II raised a difficult issue that the Court has never encountered: when several authorities co-existed within a State, which could represent the country to participate or apply to participate in a case before the Court? This is the issue of right to representation of governments in the Court. After a thorough analysis of the two situations, the author finds that the Prosecutor‟s decisions on whether or not to initiate investigations, which seemingly gave an answer to the above question, did not yet provide a decent explanation for it. Hence the author indicates the problems in the Prosecutor‟s decisions, and then puts forth that the core justification for the Prosecutor‟s decisions lies in the position of the United Nations in this regard. As a comparison as well as verification, the author also examines the situation in Palestine. Although the Palestine situation was concerned about whether a State could join the Court, namely the eligibility of States, which differs from the issue in the situations in Egypt and the CAR II, the Prosecutor‟s decision echoed the conjecture drawn from the other two situations. This tentative exploration on the two relevant issues may help us gain a better understanding of how the Court, in facing the changing circumstances of international peace and security, copes with the legal and political problems newly emerged.