"2 Against an entrenched culture of impunity that had countenanced the likes of Pol Pot and Idi Amin, these precedents radically surfaced and mainstreamed accountability, profoundly and irreversibly altering the conventional wisdom about the boundaries of power and legitimacy in international affairs. The imposition of individual responsibility for massive human rights violations, even for seemingly untouchable leaders, was now a distinct possibility in a transformed political calculus. This new context emboldened the proponents of criminal justice and made possible the proliferation of several other audacious experiments ranging from the hybrid Special Court for Sierra Leone to the national court proceedings against Augusto Pinochet in both the United Kingdom and Chile. In addition to providing valuable insight into the efficacy of, and relationship between, various types of jurisdiction, this burgeoning culture of accountability also imbued the ICC process with a credibility and vitality that discernibly expedited its creation. By the time that its judges and prosecutor were elected in 2003, the ICC found itself at the pivot of this complex patchwork of jurisdictions in an emerging system of international criminal justice. The Court was embraced by an international community that had increasingly internalized the importance of accountability as an instrument of post-conflict peace-building and world order.
The ICC Statute is one of the most ambitious treaties in the history of international law. It is, in effect, an attempt to conceive an entire system of international criminal justice. The fact that the Statute could be negotiated and adopted, as well as enter into force, in just a few short years is remarkable. The negotiating process was a period of exceptional ferment that brought together diplomats, bureaucrats, lawyers, academicians, and activists from widely diverse historical traditions, political perspectives, and legal systems.