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nostupidquestions·No Stupid QuestionsbyDon_Dickle

Are there world laws? Where if you violate them a group of soldiers will come to your country and take you to the ICC? If the ICC is moot then why have it? or for that matter the UN?

And yes I get the joke Team America World Police.

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Where if you violate them a group of soldiers will come to your country and take you to the ICC?

The ICC doesn't have its own "soldiers", military, police force, etc. They rely entirely on the cooperation of other countries.

For example, if Benjamin Netanyahu had an arrest warrant, traveled to a country that works with the ICC, and the country chose to comply with the ICC's orders, then they might arrest him with their local police force, then transfer him to an ICC-partnered detention facility either in that country or elsewhere.

But if he goes to a country that doesn't care that he's a genocidal warmonger, or simply doesn't respect the authority of the ICC, the ICC just doesn't really have the ability to do anything about that. (other than, say, getting other countries aligned with them to put some sort of pressure on that country, or by choosing not to assist that country with its own prosecutions or transfer of inmates if the ICC gets custody of them after they did a crime against that country at some point)

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A few things to add to that:

  • not all crimes qualify for extradition, it's usually to do with the severity of the crime
  • some international bodies may be involved iirc, like interpol and Europol etc
  • it can also be done by three letter agencies or even just normal police. The extradition is usually just burocracy that slowly escalates up the levels of justice and finally to the indicting country
  • geopolitics can make this extremely complicated, because countries never cooperate out of goodwill, usually there's underlying treaties that bind a bunch of them to commit to extradition
  • usually criminals get away with something, because the countries they live in don't cooperate with an extradition in various ways
  • because it's international and countries act in their own best interest, jurisdictional boundaries are sometimes extremely weird and assumed jurisdiction can make things difficult (multiple charges for a crime, countries not extraditing because they don't trust the judicial branch of another country, weird quirks of things like law in space and maritime law, ...
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International law, yes, but every country that has laws basically has jurisdiction. It's also not very well enforced. Like when the mayor of New York City (or maybe the governor, I'm not 100% sure) wanted to arrest the president/PM/dictator/whatever TF he is of Israel and turn him over to the ICC, only he looked it up and realised he didn't actually have the authority to do that. So, of note, the ICC couldn't just go to the US and get that terrorist dude, they needed the local authorities to do that, and, well, he's in bed with another dictator, so that didn't happen.

Then again, the dictator who ran that country sent his troops into another country to kidnap their leader and lock him up, so... might makes right?

Also worth noting: There are some people who believe in a world government that has jurisdiction everywhere. Most of them aren't good people. You think they'd reign in dictators. They'd be the dictators. All the fuckers you don't like would be running it and exerting their power over the ones you do like/tolerate. That's why, in a nutshell, most reasonable people oppose a world government. The smaller the countries are, the more likely/probable it is/becomes that people who aren't well served by one can just move to another (at least, this is true in some areas, like the EU, and within the US) and then the ones which make the most money will be more successful... but then some people won't move, or can't. But the idea is to make it easier. It's the ones who want to control everybody and everything (you probably already know who I mean) who want a world government, with themselves in power, and the power guaranteed and be unable to be taken from them. An AskHistory comm might be better to ask about the specifics of global government vs smaller nation-states.

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It's not so much international laws, as there are international agreements regarding laws that tend to be universal; theft, murder, that kind of stuff. There's also treaties governing extradition of wanted criminals internationally. InterPol exists, nominally, to facilitate international law enforcement, as well as most signatories to things like the Geneva conventions and international human rights treaties agree to use their law enforcement to detain and extradite individuals wanted for foreign crimes or required to appear before the International Criminal Court (ICC). There's no world government so there's no one legislating anything in any way that anyone has to follow. Contrary to popular delusion, the United Nations doesn't actually pass laws, it just creates resolutions and any nation that feels like it can voluntarily sign on or not as their internal government chooses. If Congress or whatever legislative body a country has ratifies a treaty and makes it their own law, that's their choice and they're expected to enforce it in whatever way they deem appropriate. There's a couple exceptions for "Crimes against humanity" like the Geneva Conventions where everyone agrees you did something so bad it affects us all globally which can be heard at the ICC but those are still technically voluntary. It's just that rather than having 200 trials in every country that wants a piece of you, they can have one big trial in The Hague and be done with it.

But no, except in extreme cases like genocide, as long as you keep your nonsense on your side of the fence, that's your business. You go running around vandalizing stuff on vacation to.

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Are there world laws? Where if you violate them a group of soldiers will come to your country and take you to the ICC? If the ICC is moot then why have it? or for that matter the UN? | Spyke