On 17 July 1998, at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, 120 States voted to adopt the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Less than four years later – far sooner than even the most optimistic observers had imagined – the Statute had obtained the requisite sixty ratifications for its entry into force, which took place on 1 July 2002. By mid-2010, the number of States Parties stood at 111. By then, the Court was a thriving, dynamic international institution, with an annual budget of about €100 million and a staff of more than 500. Its first trial was nearing completion, and two others were in their initial stages.

The Rome Statute provides for the creation of an international criminal court with power to try and punish for the most serious violations of human rights in cases when national justice systems fail at the task. It constitutes a benchmark in the progressive development of international human rights, whose beginning dates back more than sixty years, to the adoption on 10 December 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. The previous day, on 9 December 1948, the Assembly had adopted a resolution mandating the International Law Commission to begin work on the draft statute of an international criminal court, in accordance with Article VI of the Genocide Convention.