CCLCJ Seminar: Under Scrutiny: Universal Jurisdiction in England and Wales within a Fragmented Western Landscape

Over the past decade, universal jurisdiction has been quietly but significantly reshaped through the practice of Western states. The United Kingdom now finds itself under particular scrutiny, as peers, NGOs and professional bodies call for substantial reform of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 (ICCA) to close what they describe as a “justice gap” that risks turning the UK into a safe haven for suspects of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes who are neither British nationals nor residents but are present on UK territory. Proposed amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill would align England and Wales with states such as Germany, France and Sweden by establishing presence based jurisdiction over all core international crimes, bringing the ICCA closer to the “no safe haven” model already applied to torture and grave breaches.

Drawing on my broader research, this paper situates the UK debate within a wider spectrum of Western approaches, ranging from the abandoned “global enforcer” as exercised by Belgium and Spain to the more institutionally embedded frameworks of Germany, France, Sweden and other Nordic states. It argues that universal jurisdiction has been “juridified” through nationally tailored combinations of constraints that both enable and restrict prosecutions, and that collectively shape what “universal” jurisdiction means in practice. The paper concludes by bringing these Western trajectories into dialogue with critiques from Asian states and the wider Global South, asking whether a reformed, presence based ICCA in England and Wales can genuinely move beyond patterns of selectivity and perceived judicial neo colonialism, or whether it risks reproducing them in a more sophisticated form.