Professor Schabas,

I agree with you that Article VI of the Genocide Convention controls which courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate violations of the Genocide Convention. I also believe that the ICC is not a “competent tribunal” to adjudicate Sudan’s potential violations of the Genocide Convention.

However, assuming arguendo that Article VI implies the existence of a duty to cooperate with the ICC, I would argue that this duty arises when the Prosecutor meets the evidentiary standard for issuing an arrest warrant—even if it unlikely for him to succeed on those charges. I ground this argument on Article VI’s text, which uses the phrase “[p]ersons charged with genocide.”

This phrase implies that an obligation to cooperate with a tribunal arises whenever there is sufficient evidence to charge a person for genocide. The phrase does not pass judgment on how strong the charges must be; rather, there need only be sufficient evidence to issue the charges. Thus, since the Prosecutor has sufficient evidence to issue the arrest warrant, I would argue that this would be sufficient to establish the assumed duty to cooperate with the ICC.