Hilary Benn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Hilary Benn on 2016-03-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the Government’s policy is on the UN Security Council referring evidence of potential genocide by Daesh to the International Criminal Court.

Mr Philip Hammond

The International Criminal Court Prosecutor set out some of the complicated issues involved in the ICC investigating Daesh in her statement of 8 April 2015. Under article 13 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Court may exercise its jurisdiction if a situation in a specified territory is referred to the Prosecutor by the UN Security Council. When efforts were made to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC in 2014, this proposed referral was vetoed by Russia and China. However, the Government remains committed to working with our international partners to ensure that Daesh is held to account for its crimes and that those who have suffered at its hand receive justice.