Event Title: The ICC Enforcement Gap: A Green Light for Unilateralism Toward a Model of Dynamic Complementarity
Date: 24 March 2026
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Venue: Library Art Gallery
Abstract
Between 2022 and 2026, a series of major crises—including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza, President Maduro’s capture in Venezuela, and rising tensions involving Iran—have tested the limits of the international legal order. During this period, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued unprecedented arrest warrants against sitting leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, signaling that even powerful actors are not formally beyond the reach of international criminal law. Yet the failure of several states to execute these warrants has exposed the structural limits of the system and has produced a persistent enforcement gap. In such an environment, powerful states feel increasingly emboldened to act unilaterally, bypassing the constraints of the United Nations Charter and international human rights law. This presentation argues that the ICC’s current model of complementarity is ill-suited for situations in which governments accused of international crimes remain in power. It proposes a reconceptualization of complementarity under which the ICC operates in a coordinated and strategic manner with third states capable of exercising universal jurisdiction, creating a more effective and deterrent system of accountability.
Bio
Tomás Kevin Manguel is an Argentine lawyer specializing in criminal law, international criminal law, and human rights. He is Professor of International Criminal Law at the University of Buenos Aires and Visiting Researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin. Based in Ankara, he also serves as Legal Adviser to the Argentine Embassy in Türkiye. He has over twenty years of experience in the Argentine Federal Criminal Court of Cassation, focusing on organized crime and crimes against humanity. Internationally, he has worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as a Legal Fellow at the Guernica Centre for International Justice and as Head of the International Criminal Law Department at the Italian NGO, StraLi. Mr. Manguel holds a specialization in Criminal Law from the University of Buenos Aires, as well as two LL.M. degrees: one in Criminal Law (University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University, Spain) and another in International Crime and Justice (United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Italy). He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Palermo (Italy), focusing on the interaction between Universal Jurisdiction and the Principle of Complementarity. He is also an international juror at the ICC’s Moot Court Competition. He has published several articles and book chapters in the field of International Criminal Law, many of them have been incorporated into the ICC’s Spanish-language Model Course on International Criminal Law.
The language of the event is English.