On July 1, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague celebrates its tenth anniversary. What has been its significance to the Netherlands?

In 1998, when the ICC’s founding treaty the Rome Statute was ratified, the Netherlands was the only country to volunteer to house the tribunal.
‘The Netherlands has a tradition that goes back to Hugo de Groot, the 17th century founding father of international law’, Trouw quotes Sam Muller, director of the The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL). According to Muller it’s no coincidence that The Hague is home to a long row of international tribunals and courts: the Yugoslavia Tribunal, the International Court of Justice, the Rwanda Tribunal, Eurojust and the Permanent Court of Arbitration among them.
Ben Bot, former justice minister and chairman of the Clingendael Institute, thinks the Netherlands should cherish its reputation for ‘peace and justice’ and its ‘leading role’ in international justice matters. ‘The Hague’s international institution is a bulwark against a world order of might is right’, Bot says.
Biggest supporter
But there are negatives to having the court within Dutch borders too. Trouw talked to former UN political advisor Warmer ten Kate who feels that by wanting the institute to be a success the Netherlands has turned into its biggest supporter.
His own efforts to negotiate a peace treaty with the Ugandan rebel army LRA were marred by the fact that the ICC had indicted the LRA commanders. ‘They thought I was a ICC representative because I came from the Netherlands. Luckily that negative attitude didn’t last but it shows how quickly certain associations will be made.’
And then there’s the financial aspects. Security costs are sky high and recent squabbles about the rent for the ICC offices have soured the relationship between the ICC and the Dutch state somewhat.
The Netherlands promised to pay the ICC’s rent for the first 10 years – ‘€6m for the rent, a €2.8m contribution to the budget plus a budget for smaller projects in 2011’, Trouw writes. It took parliamentary pressure to convince foreign minister Uri Rosenthal to extend the period by six months.
Bill
‘These things happen all the time between organisations and host states’, Muller says. ‘We shouldn’t be too stingy about these things but on the other hand we shouldn’t be made to pay indefinitely’.
Although a proper cost benefit analyses has never been made, Bot claims that instead of losing money the Netherlands is turning a profit. There are 700 staff living and spending money in the Netherlands, and the court pays at least €2m for cells in the Scheveningen prison complex.
On top of that the court attracts thousands of visitors a year who also spend money. ‘People are moaning and groaning about the costs but we’re doing very well out of the ICC’, he says.
‘Cities like Geneva and Vienna would love to accommodate institutions like this’, the paper quotes Bot as saying. ‘And if the ICC were to go we could very well lose more.’
It isn’t very likely to happen: in 2015 the ICC will be moving to a new headquarters in the Benoordenhout area of The Hague. Even here controversy wasn’t entirely absent. The people of Benoordenhout who feared their neighbourhood would be awash with cars went to court to stop the International Court. They lost.