 Article 4- Legal status and powers of the Court-clause 2 says-The Court may exercise its

functions and powers, as provided in this Statute, on the territory of any State Party and,
by special agreement, on the territory of any other State.
 The ICC can exercise jurisdiction over the crimes listed in Article 5 ICC both in relation
to state parties and non-party states (Article 12 ICC). In respect of state parties, the
jurisdiction of the ICC is not only exercised vis-à-vis the state that has a special link with
a crime, but all ICC state parties for example through the summoning of witnesses
(Martines, 2002, p. 214). In respect of non-party states, it is a general rule of international
law that a treaty cannot create obligations for third states without their consent (Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties, 23 May 1969, 1155 UNTS 331, entered into force 27
January 1980, Articles 34–36). Therefore, the possibility of extending the legal
personality of the ICC also to non-party states is one of the more novel features of the
ICC Statute. Non-party states can accept the jurisdiction of the ICC through a declaration
(Article 12(3) ICC), the Court can invite non-party states to provide assistance through ad
hoc arrangements, agreements, or “any other appropriate basis” (Article 87 ICC), and the
ICC may come to exercise jurisdiction over non-party states through UN Security
Council referral (Article 13(b) ICC). The use of declarations and agreements for
extending the jurisdiction of the ICC ensures a consensual basis for the extension. For
example, Côte d’Ivoire had, prior to its ratification of the ICC Statute in 2013, accepted
the jurisdiction of the Court already in 2005 (ICC, Registrar confirms that the Republic of
Côte d’Ivoire has accepted the jurisdiction of the Court, ICC-CPI-20050215-91).
 The absence of such expressions of consent does not however necessarily prevent the
Prosecutor from acting on a situation. The possibility of extending the jurisdiction of the
ICC to nonparty states even without their consent through UN Security Council referral is
by some authors considered as a true expression of the ‘objective’ legal personality of the
Court (on theories of legal personality, see, for example, Martines, 2002, pp. 206–208
and Klabbers, 2009, pp. 46– 51). The UN Security Council has, in referring situations to
the ICC, emphasised that States not parties to the ICC Statute have no obligations under
the Statute (UN SC Res. 1593 (2005) on the situation in Darfur, 31 March 2005, para. 2,
and UN SC Res. 1970 (2011) on the situation in Libya, 17 March 2011, para. 5). The
obligation for non-party states to cooperate with the Court rather derives from the UN
 Charter (Article 25 Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945, 1 UNTS XVI, entered
into force 24 October 1945, Gallant, 2003, p. 583; Williams and Schabas, 2008, pp. 569–
74; and Schabas, 2010, pp. 293–304).
 Article 12- Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction 1. A State which becomes a Party
to this Statute thereby accepts the jurisdiction of the Court with respect to the crimes
referred to in article 5. 2. In the case of article 13, paragraph (a) or (c), the Court may
exercise its jurisdiction if one or more of the following States are Parties to this Statute or
have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with paragraph 3:
(a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred or, if the crime
was committed on board a vessel or aircraft, the State of registration of that vessel or
aircraft;

(b) The State of which the person accused of the crime is a national. 3. If the acceptance of a
State which is not a Party to this Statute is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by
declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with
respect to the crime in question. The accepting State shall cooperate with the Court without any
delay or exception in accordance with Part 9.

 Article 27- Irrelevance of official capacity

1. This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official
capacity. In particular, official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a
Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no
case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it, in and
of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence. 2. Immunities or special
procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under
national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over
such a person.
 the Statute provides that the ICC may have some opportunity to exercise jurisdiction over the
nationals of states that are not parties to the Statute and have not otherwise consented to
the court's jurisdiction. Article 12 provides that, in addition to jurisdiction based on Security
Council action under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and jurisdiction based on
consent by the defendant's state of nationality, the ICC will have jurisdiction to prosecute the
national of any state, including Non-States Parties, when crimes within the court's subject-
 matter jurisdiction are committed on the territory of a State Party or a state that consents to
the ICC jurisdiction over that case. That territorial basis would empower the court to exercise
jurisdiction in cases where the defendant's home state is not a party to the treaty and does
not consent to the exercise of jurisdiction.( https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/22755)

 Article 12 is the result of a “compromise between State sovereignty and the needs of
international justice. . In the ICC Statute’s current structure State sovereignty, as
underlined in particular in Article 12(2)– (3), may be pierced only by the referral of a
situation to the prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council (‘UNSC’), pursuant to
Article 13(b).
 Germany represented one extreme in the alternative that may be described as “universal
jurisdiction”. Germany held the view that States could delegate their jurisdiction they are
entitled under customary international law to the Court. Since several States exercise
universal jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes this
jurisdiction could be delegated to the Court. They were supported by States such as
Sweden, Czech Republic, Latvia, Costa Rica, Albania, Ghana, Namibia, Italy, Hungary,
Azerbaijan, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Ecuador.
 a referral of the relevant situation to the Prosecutor by the UNSC according to Article
13(b) may still trigger the exercise of jurisdiction. Although such situations are likely to
be relatively rare, due also to the difficulty of finding political consensus within the
UNSC, this possibility might prove to be valuable in the future in order to reach the
ambitious goal of ending impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of
concern to the international community. Similarly, an ad hoc acceptance of an affected
territorial or nationality non-State Party to the ICC Statute pursuant to Article 12(3) does
have this same effect, that is, enabling the ICC to exercise its jurisdiction.
 Following from the alternative wording “one or more” contained in Article 12(2) the
Court may come to exercise its jurisdiction in cases where States not being Parties to the
Statute are involved and which do not, pursuant to Article 12(3), ad hoc accept the
exercise of jurisdiction. This may, for example, be the case where a crime is committed in
the territory of a State party by a national of a non-State Party, or where a national of a
State Party commits a serious crime in the territory of a non-State Party. Notwithstanding
 the influence this might imply on a State not being a party to the ICC Statute, due to the
anchorage of both the principle of territoriality and nationality in general international
law, such exercise of jurisdiction cannot, however, be in violation of Article 34 Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties (concluded 23 May 1969, entered into force 27
January 1980, 1155 UNTS 331).
 According to the principle of territorial jurisdiction the territorial State may exercise
jurisdiction regardless of the nationality of the person accused of the crime. With regard
to the ICC this means that the Court may take jurisdiction over a conduct which occurred
in the territory of a State Party, regardless of whether the person accused of the crime is a
citizen of that same State or of a non-State Party. Furthermore, the exercise of jurisdiction
is independent of the victim’s nationality and whether the alleged criminal remains in a
custodial State which is a State party or non-State Party.
 the United Nations Security Council may under the powers in Article 25 and Chapter VII
of the UN Charter decide that all States, including non-State parties, shall cooperate fully
with and provide any necessary assistance to the Court and the Prosecutor. The Security
Council used this power when it referred the situation of Darfur to the Court in
Resolution 1593 (2005).
 Article 14- Referral of a situation by a State Party184-- 1. A State Party may refer to the
Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court
appear to have been committed requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation for
the purpose of determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with
the commission of such crimes.
 This article analyses recent ICC jurisprudence and argues that under the ICC Statute
CAH can be committed pursuant to or in furtherance of a policy of any non-state entity
that has the capacity to orchestrate crimes that factually amount to a widespread or
systematic attack against a civilian population.
 Different accounts exist of what constitutes CAH and thereby harms humanity, ranging
from characterizing CAH as particularly inhumane human rights violations that 'deny
their victims the status of human being',7 over crimes that harm the interests of
humankind as a collective entity,8 to CAH as group crimes that are committed both
against groups and by groups.( M. Renzo, 'Crimes Against Humanity and the Limits of
 International Criminal Law', (2012) 31 Law and Philosophy 443, at 448. 8 See, e.g., H.
Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Reporton the Banality ofEvil, (1994), at 269.)
 it is submitted here that in situations where large-scale group crimes occur the decisive
question should be not whether these crimes are committed on behalf of a governing
entity. The distinctive characteristic of CAH should rather be that large-scale human
rights violations against a population are committed in circumstances where the victims
are deprived of any prospect of protection by territorial authorities.
 Rome Statute empowers the ICC to compel the nationals of non-parties to comply with
its orders to provide evidence or surrender indicted persons. Professor Daniel Bodansky
writes that "international law, like U.S. law, places far fewer limits on the exercise of
adjudicatory than prescriptive jurisdiction [sic], perhaps because the exercise of
adjudicatory jurisdiction over extraterritorial activities is not viewed as infringing to the
same degree on the sovereignty or domestic jurisdiction of the state where the activity at
issue occurred."( WORLD JUSTICE: U.S. COURTS AND INTERNATIONAL
HUMAN RIGHTS 6 (Mark Gibney ed., 1991).)
 "It is a fundamental principle of international law that restrictions on [ s ]tates cannot be
presumed but must be found in conventional law specifically accepted by them or in
customary law generally accepted by the community of nations.( Written Statement of
the Government of the United States of America, Before the International Court of
Justice, Request by the United Nations General Assembly for an Advisory Opinion on the
Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, June 20, 1995, at 8 (on file with
author).)
 in addition to the principle of territoriality, the ICC has a legitimate interest on the basis
of the universal nature of the crimes to prosecute the nationals of non-party states. In this
limited context, the jurisdiction of the ICC can be deemed to be based concurrently on the
universal and territmial bases of jurisdiction. Universal jurisdiction provides every state
with jurisdiction over a limited category of offenses generally recognized as of universal
concern, regardless of where the offense occurred, the nationality of the perpetrator, or
the nationality of the victim.
 "the requirement of the consent of the state on whose tenitory the crime was committed
would be unnecessary if the [c]ourt's basis for jurisdiction were universality."46 His
 contention, however, is belied by the negotiating record of the Rome Treaty. No one at
the Rome Diplomatic Conference disputed that the core crimes within the ICC's
jurisdiction-genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes-were crimes of universal
jurisdiction under customary international law
 Thus, the drafters did not view the consent of the state of tenitoriality or nationality as
necessary as a matter of international law to confer jurisdiction on the court. Rather, they
adopted the consent regime as a limit to the exercise of the court's inherent jurisdiction as
a politically expedient concession to the sovereignty of states in order to gamer broad
support for the statute.( Philippe Kirsch & John T. Holmes, The Rome Conference on an
International Criminal Court: The Negotiating Process, 93 AM. J. INT'L L. 2, 12 n.19
(1999).)
 According to Philippe Kirsch, the Chairman of the Rome Diplomatic Conference, three
options were considered with respect to the exercise of the ICC's jurisdiction.50 The first
option was a German proposal providing automatic jurisdiction over the core crimes in
the court's statute, which enjoyed strong suppore The second option, which also garnered
wide support, was a Korean proposal that provided jurisdiction if any of four states were
party to the court's statute: the tenitorial state, the state of nationality of the accused, the
state of nationality of the victim, or the state with custody of the accused.52 The third
option, proposed by the United States, would require the consent of the State of
nationality of the offender as a precondition for the exercise of jurisdiction over war
crimes and c1imes against humanity, but not for genocide. 53 This option enjoyed ve1y
little suppore•
 With time running out, on the last day of the Diplomatic Conference, the Conference
Bureau presented what it considered to be a compromise approach that would "attract the
broadest possible support for the statute. " 55 This approach, which is codified in the final
text of Article 12 of the Rome Treaty, requires as a precondition for the exercise of
jurisdiction that either the territorial state or the state of nationality of the accused be
parties to the court's statute or give special consent to the ICC's jurisdiction on an ad hoc
basis.
 Where the prosecutor or territorial state brings a complaint concerning the nationals of a
non-party state, Article 18 of the statute accords the non-party state the same procedural
rights as party states in terms of challenging the admissibility of the case. 5 7
 In the Regina v Finta case, the Canadian Supreme Court held that the universality
principle permitted the exercise of jurisdiction over acts committed by anyone anywhere,
if the offence constituted an attack on the international legal order.
 If there are equivocal points of view as to whether a State may delegate territorial
jurisdiction to another State without the consent of the State of nationality of the person,
care should be taken about any statement regarding the legality of such delegation to an
international tribunal.( Morris (n 20) 45.)
 There is no doubt that all States have a sovereign right to determine how to exercise their
jurisdiction over crimes committed on their own territory or their recognized jurisdiction
over crimes of universal concern[.] … [N]on-Member States have no legal ground to
object to the legitimate transfer of existing national powers of Member States to an
international judiciary, in particular their power to exercise jurisdiction over grave
international crimes.