« Evaluating the Likelihood of an ICC Prosecution for Crimes Committed by Chiquita Banana Employees in Colombia », 9 September 2018

In May 2017, three non-governmental organisations submitted an Article 15 Communication to the International Criminal Court seeking the expansion of the Office of the Prosecutor’s on-going preliminary investigation in Colombia to include corporate officials of Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (‘Chiquita’)...This could allow the Court to expand the scope of its work beyond the military and political leaders it has pursued thus far, and to provide an international forum in which to try the employees of corporations involved in the commission of atrocity crimes. Unfortunately, the International Criminal Court’s Statute, as written, will make it very difficult for such prosecutions to succeed...the International Criminal Court is likely not the best forum for pursuing corporate actors for human rights violations. Here, we have a situation in which multiple members of the AUC have been convicted of atrocity crimes, Chiquita has admitted that it was aware that those crimes were being carried out and it still continued making payments to the AUC. Despite this undisputed evidence, an International Criminal Court prosecution will almost certainly fail because there is no direct link between the money paid and the crimes committed.