The Limited Utility of the ICC’s Performance Indicators

The four key goals identified by the ICC in 2015 and reaffirmed in a slightly revised version in a Second Report from 2016-expeditious, fair, and transparent proceedings; effective leadership and management; adequate security; and access for victims to the Court-offer a useful starting point for evaluating the performance of the Court. They have also facilitated the collection of many relevant performance indicators-quantitative data that enables the Court, the asp and outside observers to track changes over time in judicial performance (and to compare it to the practice of other international criminal courts). Still, one may question how central these key goals are for evaluating the over-all effectiveness of the ICC. In fact, it appears as if the key goals are a hodgepodge of process and outcome goals, which are related to different evaluative criteria-judicial effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency- and do not sufficiently relate to the core business of the ICC-e.g., ending impunity and developing international criminal law. Moreover, one may question whether the Court is sufficiently sensitive to the risk of availability bias, which might lead to distorted evaluation of the fulfilment of the four key goals, and of the overall operations of the Court. Finally, one may question the choice of “primarily under the control of the court itself” as a reason for narrowly focusing only on the four key goals. Such a criterion results in an analysis that ignores the most important goals of the Court, and its application even to the four key goals is questionable.