I think everybody, from Nuremberg onward, realized that the crime of aggression is a serious crime. It subsumes within it parts of many of the conflicts but not always. Rwanda had an internal armed conflict. In a hundred days, there was no crime of aggression. It was Rwandese against Rwandese. After the Holocaust, maybe there hasn't been such an intense period of killing since that period, that example. That wasn't a crime of aggression. That wouldn't have cured anything. In relation to that, it was a failure of early warning signals.
I start with a general proposition as a lawyer. It's a matter of equity. The law we apply against others is the law we should hold ourselves to. It brings law into disrepute, it increases marginalization, and it leads to a gap, a distance and a dissonance in parts of the world if they see unabated selectivity in which law is being applied as a stick, when it is not being applied to oneself.
The Rome Statute has the crime of aggression. It was drafted in Kampala. It is active. We have an active jurisdiction, but there were jurisdictional requirements for it to apply. If we have matured as an international community, and if we realize that there is a missing piece and that the law can be better than it is, for me, the obvious logical and equitable way would be to amend it through the Rome Statute.
However, what I'm focused on is the law we have. I think it is a little unfortunate that the law we have is not impotent. The law we have was sufficient for Milošević, Karadžić, Mladić, Jean Kambanda and Hissène Habré in Senegal, and for individual after individual to come before courts and to bow their heads toward justice.
As you can see, in terms of the Ukraine situation and the new warrants in Libya and elsewhere, we're trying to be less pedestrian and to accelerate into action, be relevant and be on the front lines. I think focusing too much on the law we don't have can overshadow the law we do have. The challenge should be in making the law we do have as effective and as meaningful as possible. That should be something that binds us together.