Regionalizacja międzynarodowego sądownictwa karnego z perspektywy zasady komplementarności na przykładzie proponowanego Afrykańskiego Trybunału Sprawiedliwości oraz Praw Człowieka I Ludów

The present contribution deals with recent trends of regionalizing international criminal justice, as in the case of the proposed extension of jurisdiction of the African Court of Justice and Human and People’s Rights over international crimes, and examines them against the background of the principle of complementarity, whose classic aim would be to allocate jurisdiction between the International Criminal Court and national courts. It is argued that the traditional understanding of complementarity may be extended to accommodate also regional criminal tribunals. A regional layer of criminal jurisdiction would therefore be introduced between the ICC and national courts. Given the overlapping but not identical scopes of jurisdiction, by the ICC, and the African Court, respectively, it is possible to conceive of them as potential partners working in parallel terms in prosecuting international (and transnational) crimes.