The scope of the Colombian declaration under article 124 of the Rome Statute

Abstract

On 1 November 2009 the exclusion of the International Criminal Court’s competence with regard to war crimes, declared by Colombia under Article 124 of the Rome Statute, has ended. Only a few months later, during the Review Conference of the Statute in Kampala in June 2010, the States Party decided to maintain the norm in its current form. For this reason this article will investigate the effects of this exclusion on the Colombian internal armed conflict. It will trace the ratification process of the Rome Statute and the circumstances of the adoption of the declaration in Colombia. Furthermore, it will show that the effects of the declaration in the context of the Colombian conflict are more limited than they appear in the first view, because many acts that are punishable as war crimes can also be sanctioned as crimes against humanity.