Good Intentions and bad consequences: the general assistance mandate of the Trust Fund for Victims of the ICC

Abstract

Recognising the needs of victims in international criminal justice, the ICC has introduced an innovative reparation scheme including the establishment of the Trust Fund for Victims. Besides the Fund’s role to implement reparation orders, a second mandate has later been developed to provide immediate help to victims independent from a criminal conviction: the general assistance mandate. Surprisingly, this mandate has to date attracted only little attention from scholars and remains vastly under-researched. By exploring in detail the work of the general assistance mandate, this article exposes its structural weaknesses as well as the negative impact it has on the procedures of the Court as a whole. It will demonstrate how the general assistance mandate weakens the legitimacy of the ICC as it undermines the presumption of innocence, risks compromising international and national Court proceedings and masks the weaknesses of the Court. While there is no doubt that humanitarian assistance is urgently needed in situations that are hence investigated by the ICC, the mechanism chosen, namely the Trust Fund’s general assistance mandate is not an adequate solution. This paper therefore argues that general assistance has no place in an international criminal court and should therefore be completely separated from the ICC.

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ORCID for Regina Rauxloh: orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-1424

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