International Criminal Court: Reservations of Non-State Parties in Southeast Asia‪.‬

Introduction Since the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998, followed by its entry into force on 1 July 2002, reactions from Southeast Asia have been lukewarm. The Statute, which exercises jurisdiction over four crimes--genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression (applicable only after a further provision defining aggression and conditions of jurisdiction is adopted) (1)--is ratified by only two of the eleven Southeast Asian states. (2) Even so, one would expect its primary supporters to be countries such as the Philippines and Thailand, where human rights issues are openly discussed and more or less entrenched in the political culture. Yet this is not the case. The first country in the region to ratify the Statute, Cambodia, only managed to wrestle itself free from Vietnamese occupation and the Khmer Rouge stranglehold about a decade ago and is still coming to terms with its brutal past. Timor-Leste, on the other hand, gained its full independence as recently as 20 May 2002 after a period of controversial annexation by Indonesia.