Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht

In establishing an International Criminal Court there are few precedents to follow. Difficulties abound, including the determination of the appropriate form for the Office of the Prosecutor. In this decision, one set of experiences to be drawn upon is that of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Another is that of the many national criminal jurisdictions around the world. Therefore, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY/ICTR and the Max Planck Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law decided to draw on these experiences by commissioning reports from various national jurisdictions. These reports, which are structured along similar lines, address que-stions that are likely to be relevant in the context of an International Criminal Court.

We hope that this volume will help not only to establish the basis for a strong prosecutor's office in the ICC but also that it will help to identify some of the problems that will inevitably arise when the ICC is established and that it will provide guidance on how these problems might be resolved.