Abstract | In an effort to fight impunity for the gravest crimes committed on its territory, the Democratic Republic of the Congo ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 11 April 2002. This was fol-lowed by the promulgation on 18 November 2002 of the Military Judicial Code and the Military Penal Code, which incriminated war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. However, these two Acts gave exclusive jurisdiction to the military courts to punish these crimes. Moreover, the definitions given in the Military Penal Code for these crimes were ambiguous and somewhat contradictory. On December 31, 2015, the Congolese authorities promulgated the laws amending and supplementing the ordinary Criminal Code for the implementation of the Rome Statute. The ordinary Criminal Code now contains clear defini-tions of crimes and the jurisdiction to punish them is shared with the ordinary courts. However, the imple-menting legislation of the Rome Statute is in decline as regards penalties in relation to the repealed mili-tary criminal law, and seems to confer some sort of subsidiary jurisdiction on the ordinary courts. This study analyzes the course of harmonization of Congolese criminal law with the provisions of the Rome Statute by scrutinizing its strengths and weaknesses in order to know what impact the new legislation will have on the work of the Congolese Judge. |
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