| Abstract | The growing jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court (ICC) shows that justice for victims can be positively or negatively affected by the interpretation and application of the Court’s complementarity regime. This is not a surprise seeing that complementarity was not developed with victims in mind, nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore the impact it has on all aspects of justice for victims in The Hague and in other jurisdictions. If the ICC requires states to mirror ongoing situations and cases before the Court to secure a deferral, this will circumscribe domestic measures to deliver justice. If the ICC adopts a purposive approach to complementarity, this gives states the room to develop measures for addressing Rome Statute crimes which can benefit victims. This paper examines the Court’s decisions following Afghanistan, Venezuela, and the Philippines’ respective deferral requests to the ICC, and discusses the concept of victim-oriented qualified deference within the ICC’s pivotal complementarity framework. Victim-oriented qualified deference refers to the ICC’s deferral of exercise of jurisdiction to states upon proof of willingness and ability to address core crimes and openness to do so in a way that accommodates victims and their interests, with or without support for capacity building. Such deferral will involve judicial or non-judicial monitoring. The paper argues that victim-oriented qualified deference can be a tool for advancing a victim-oriented approach to addressing international crimes across national, regional, and domestic jurisdictions. |
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