THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT AND SOMALIA PIRACY Juliio Ogasawara, Paulo Roberto Costa de Jesus, Tânia Machado de Sá, Eliane Maria Octaviano Martins

Abstract

Created in 1998 by the Rome Statute, and with its installation and start of activities in July 2002, the International Criminal Court came to permanently fill a gap that the world community had been demanding since the end of World War II, which is the punishment of those responsible for crimes against humanity. The incisive signs of this desire are evidenced by the precedent institutions of the Nuremburg Tribunal, the Tokyo Tribunal and, by the UN, the ad hoc tribunals to judge acts committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. This article intends to make a succinct description of the International Criminal Court based on these precedents, discussing its jurisdiction, structure and principles that govern it, promoting, at the end, a brief analysis of the possibility or not of the scope of its actions in the recurring acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, in Africa.