The ICC policy paper on sexual and gender-based crimes: a crucial step for international criminal law

Abstract

In 2014, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched its Policy Paper on Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes, the first policy issued by the Office. 1 It was the culmination of more than two years of effort by the ICC's second Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to strengthen her office's focus, expertise and commitment to the prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes. 2 This Policy Paper represented an important step within international criminal law and has the potential to transform how gendered acts within genocide, mass atrocity, and war are prosecuted.The basis for the policy was the explicit inclusion in the Rome Statute of the ICC of an expansive list of sexual and gender-based violations, including "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization," other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity and gender-based persecution. 3 This was the first time in international criminal law that sexual and gender-based acts had been this extensively enumerated as crimes.