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, on 1 July 2002. By early 2003, the number had climbed to nearly ninety. This complex and detailed international treaty 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, something whose beginning dates back more than fifty 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.

Establishing the international criminal court took considerably longer than many had hoped. In the early years of the Cold War, in 1954, the General Assembly essentially suspended work on the project. It did not resume this work until 1989. The end of the Cold War gave the idea of a court the breathing space it needed.