June 19th, 2024: The Rome Statute
You can find the document linked in our calendar. There will be another resistance circle on the Rome Statue on September 18, 2024!
We discussed the following:
The Rome Statute is a document created in 1998 to ensure world peace and acts as the basis of international law.
127 countries are signatories to the Statute, which is legally binding, while 7 countries voted against and the rest abstained. The votes against were anonymous, but 2 countries publicly stated that they were against the Statute (the United States of America and the State of Israel).
The Statute defines war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, in which committing any of the aforementioned acts are punishable by the Rome Statute.
Any INDIVIDUAL can be prosecuted on the basis of the Rome Statute for involvement in the crimes that the Statute identifies; involvement is defined in the Statute.
We encourage all to read page 8 of the Rome Statue, which outlines its purpose and intention. Do we see these intentions reflected in the current global landscape? How can we hold leaders accountable to their dismissal of this important document?
The members of the Circle, and as a whole, critiqued and examined the Rome Statute. We referred to specific articles and analyzed the legal language used. Here are some highlights of our discussion:
Whether or not the members of the Circle agreed with the definitions of “war crimes” and “collective humanity”
The premise of the Statute being a legal system
What each member and the Circle would change to the document
Was the Statute correctly applied in the recent arrest warrants issued against Israeli government and military officials as well as Hamas leaders? We argued that it was not correctly applied. We identified complications regarding the extensive process for issuing arrest warrants to uphold world peace when there is a need for immediacy.
The Rome Statue is a good starting place for refuting Zionist logic and positioning the current genocide (and the responses of governments and institutions) within international law.
We also discussed ideas around resistance, aggression, and defense. We tried to place these concepts within the settler-colonial framework and the disparity in prosecution across groups based on those in power.
We were dismayed to learn that the United States passed the “Hague Invasion Act,” which means that the United States would invade The Hague (the seat of international law) if The Hague were to prosecute a citizen of the United States under the basis of International Law. In essence, it is an act put in place to directly refute the Rome Statue - a document meant to unite countries within shared values of world peace and global consciousness.
The conclusions that each participating member of the Circle had on the Rome Statute are ultimately different. However, as a collective, the Circle found that it cannot be argued that the Statute was created in goodwill and world justice as it continues to be ignored by traditionally powerful countries, and some countries oppose the Statute altogether.
