The ICC provides a means of establishing accountability when the State in which the perpetrator is located is unable or unwilling to prosecute.
Genocide is the purposeful destruction of an ethnic, national, religious, or racial group.
Perpetrators can be prosecuted for attempt or conspiracy to commit genocide, as well as the completed act. The ICC is empowered to prosecute war crimes that are committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes. This cannot occur until seven years after the Rome Treaty enters into force. The U.N. Security Council has established International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The ICC, in contrast, is created by a treaty the 1998 Rome Statute.