Positive Complementarity Revisted. An Analysis

Academic Paper from the year 2018 in the subject Law - Miscellaneous, University of Pretoria, course: International criminal law, language: English, abstract: The Current Decentralized Accountability question entails a consideration of the following important principles and issues: positive complementarity, complementarity, universal jurisdiction, and the role of regional and international organization in international criminal justice as partners with the International Criminal Court (ICC). In this comment, the focus lies on providing a foundational analysis on the policy of positive complementarity so as to intensely inform further discourse.

It is the argument of this contribution that the Cooperation Agreement signed between the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Government of Colombia, on 28 October 2021, has invariably provoked unabating scholarly discourse, which has engendered a renewed impetus to revisit the definition, nature and scope of the concept of positive complementarity. Inimical to this discourse is the glaring dearth of available literature of the law on positive complementarity, accentuated by the virtually absence of pertinent authoritative jurisprudence of the ICC on the concept.

In light of the preceding impediments, this paper seeks, in an overarching approach, to revisit the debate on the nature of the concept of positive complementarity. It re-explores the opportunities presented, the benefits generated, and the challenges posed by the development and implementation of the concept of positive complementarity in the realm of international criminal justice.