Over the past decade, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has increasingly faced accusations of being “in crisis.” Challenges range from its contentious relationship with several African countries and the African Union, mistakes at trial made by the Office of the Prosecutor, to a lack of state cooperation and the absence of investigations against Western powers. Phil Clark’s well-written and logically structured book helps explain these challenges, by arguing that it is the Court’s insistence on “distant justice” and its abandonment of complementarity that account for its troubles. The ICC, Clark maintains, “views distance and detachment from the domestic realm as a virtue because, it believes, this maintains the Court’s neutrality and impartiality” (p. 13). In its quest to act above politics, Clark argues that the Court has been largely ignorant of the local political contexts in which it has intervened both because of its own personnel profile and its insistence on appearing distant. Ultimately, he argues that the ICC has had a negative impact on African societies’ quest for justice.

The book is based on an impressive amount of fieldwork that stretched over a decade and includes more than 650 interviews with a wide range of ICC personnel, government officials, former rebels, and members from affected communities; this fieldwork has allowed Clark to analyze the Court’s interactions and impact across multiple societal segments. The book’s empirical chapters examine these intersections in detail—the court’s engagement with and impact on national governments, affected communities, national judiciaries, peace negotiations, and local justice approaches—with each chapter providing insights from the two main case studies: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. His broader findings travel beyond these two countries, however, as chapter 8 shows similar trends in the Court’s other Africa investigations. The author’s long-term focus on a decade of the Court’s work, spanning the complete trials of several ICC suspects, allows him to detect changes in its impact over the years, thus providing more than merely a snapshot in time.

The book’s main argument revolves around the ICC’s “distance” in terms of geography, staffing, and attitude. The Court wants to be perceived as removed from the national political terrain that it deems too amenable to political manipulation. By being distant, it can be seen as apolitical and guided merely by legal considerations. However, this distance has meant that the Court has also been slow to engage with affected communities through outreach and has had little country expertise among its staff. Clark convincingly shows how this distance has negatively affected the countries where it has started investigations. Rather than complementing national justice systems—a key principle at the heart of the Court—it has often dismissed local justice approaches while depicting its own mode of trial justice as superior, thus undermining national judiciaries and local community-based forms of justice. It has reduced incentives for peace negotiations by encouraging armed campaigns against rebel suspects, and it has generally strengthened national governments—on whose cooperation the Court relies—in their feeling secure to use violence against their citizens while avoiding accountability for their own crimes.

The book makes contributions to several areas of knowledge on the ICC and international justice. First, it provides a sobering account of what many hoped would be the apex of the accountability trend for suspects of mass atrocities. By consistently failing to address the crimes of state actors and to deliver a sense of justice for affected communities in the DRC and Uganda, the ICC’s justice approach instead seems to be much more selective than proponents might like to admit. Second, although not explicitly theorizing this point, the book adds to research on why governments cooperate with the Court. Clark’s work further substantiates existing scholarship that argues that governments are more likely to support the ICC’s investigations when it aligns with their own domestic agendas (e.g., see Courtney Hillebrecht and Scott Straus, “Who Pursues the Perpetrators? State Cooperation with the ICC,” Human Rights Quarterly 39 (1), 2017). Moreover, his findings speak to the issue of deterrence: Clark shows that the ICC might actually foster conflict by encouraging militarized campaigns to arrest and transfer suspects. The book also provides valuable insights for scholars and practitioners interested in the political contexts in which international criminal tribunals operate (see Victor Peskin, International Justice in Rwanda and the Balkans: Virtual Trials and the Struggle for State Cooperation, 2008; David Bosco, Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, 2014), as well as in external interventions in Africa. In Clark’s book, African states are not merely passive actors whipped around by external forces, but instead are strategic political actors who use the ICC for their own goals.

Throughout, the book raises important questions about the current international criminal justice system. In Clark’s research, the local populations from which victims hail are left outside the ICC’s justice reach. If the ICC has delivered a version of justice that remains unpalatable to a large segment of affected societies, then who ultimately benefits from its work? If it can inadvertently hamper peace negotiations between rebels and governments, then when is a good time, if ever, for an international criminal tribunal to become active? What reforms can help make the ICC less distanced? And to what extent would a less distanced and more country-focused institution open itself up to a new set of criticisms?

Despite these considerable strengths, the book would have benefited from a deeper engagement with literature on international organizations, especially international courts and their need to appear neutral and distanced to obtain legitimacy (see Karen J. Alter, “Agents or Trustees? International Courts in their Political Context,” European Journal of International Relations, 14 (1), 2008, and The New Terrain of International Law: Courts, Politics, Rights, 2014; Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics, 2004). On the one hand, Clark convincingly shows how the ICC is distant by means of its attitude, staffing, and geographical location. However, his research also reveals its impact on societies and national governments’ decision making: “Attempting to distance itself from domestic politics, it has become embroiled in—and has profoundly shaped—the politics of African states” (p. 301). This suggests that “distance” does not cover the full spectrum of the Court’s behavior and raises this question: Under what conditions would distance actually be beneficial to its work? For instance, Clark’s research reveals that the ICC’s lack of distance from national governments has made it less likely that government forces have been investigated. Hence, distance could be beneficial for the Court under certain circumstances. Future research could take Clark’s findings a step further by beginning to parse out the situations in which the Court needs distance to satisfactorily investigate government actors from those in which it needs proximity to understand local contexts.

In line with Clark’s findings and recommendations, the ICC should take seriously the suggestions he makes to increase its legitimacy in the countries where it intervenes, including a return to “complementarity” over “distance”; for example, through regional offices and more in-country presence. Especially damning for the Court is Clark’s chapter on local justice perceptions: “Constant across a decade of field research in the two countries is the refrain concerning a detached and invisible Court, lacking field presence, distrusted because of its close relations with the two governments in question and seen as deepening rather than alleviating key political, regional and ethnic divisions, while stymying attempts at national political reform” (p. 136).

Clark’s book stands out not only as a rich account of the ICC proper but also of the countries and affected communities it engages with. The book has much to offer to academic audiences and students interested in international justice and African politics, as well as practitioners who wish to unlock the ICC’s and individual countries’ potential for achieving justice.