Victim Participation in the Laurent Gbagbo Case before the International Criminal Court: A Test for Victims’ Rights or a Procedural Failure?

Abstract

The case of Laurent Gbagbo, the former President of Côte d’Ivoire, before the International Criminal Court is regarded as one of the most controversial cases of this institution due to the final acquittal of the accused in 2023. For the first time in the history of international criminal proceedings, the Rome Statute recognized an active and independent role for victims in the judicial process. However, the Gbagbo case, with more than 700 participating victims, challenged the gap between theoretical promises and practical realities. The central question of this study is whether victim participation in this case constituted a successful test for the realization of victims’ rights or reflected a procedural failure by the Court in operationalizing the fundamental principles of the Rome Statute. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this article examines the experience of victim participation at different stages of the proceedings, from preliminary investigations to the confirmation of acquittal in 2023. The findings indicate that victim participation achieved relative success in certain respects, such as documenting narratives of crimes, complementing the dimensions of sexual violence, and performing a supervisory role over the conduct of proceedings. Nevertheless, this participation encountered procedural failure in two critical areas, namely proving the responsibility of the accused and obtaining reparations, due to structural limitations, including the inability to present evidence independently, the restrictive interpretation of “personal interests,” and the legal vacuum resulting from acquittal. Moreover, the Court’s political selectivity in the one-sided prosecution of Gbagbo’s forces undermined the legitimacy of the victim participation system among victims from the opposing side. The conclusion is that the Gbagbo case reveals an architectural inconsistency between the normative rights of victims and the Court’s enforcement mechanisms, and that reforming this system requires reconsidering the scope of participation, establishing independent reparation mechanisms in cases of acquittal, and strengthening the political independence of the Court.