Why ICC Fails to Arrest the Sitting Head of the State and How to Improve

This paper aims to explain why the International Criminal Court (ICC) fails to arrest the sitting head of the state and provides recommendations to improve the efficiency of arresting the sitting head of the state. To identify the factors that hinder the arrest, this paper incorporates a literature review and case study analysis of four existing arrest attempts on the sitting head of the state initiated by The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and ICC. In the literature review and case study analysis, in addition to cases affiliated with the ICC, the ICTY, and its related case were introduced as a reference to reflect further the problems faced by the ICC in arresting sitting heads of state. Through the literature review and case studies, this paper finds that the ICCs arrest of the sitting head of the state can hardly be achieved with the ICCs limited jurisdiction, sole dependence on state cooperation, untimely interference, and inadequate supportive political power to address non-cooperation. Therefore, the ICC needs to expand its jurisdiction to reduce the room for indictees to evade arrest and also to include more supportive political powers. The ICCs cooperation model should also be reformed by authorizing cooperation with functional third-party forces to timely substitute the states function for executing the arrest in uncertainty.