On today's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji who served as president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2018-2021. Together they discuss his new book, “End of Immunity: Holding World Leaders Accountable for Aggression, Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity.” 

Prior to joining the ICC in 2012, Judge Eboe-Osuji was the Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, during which time he anchored the High Commissioner's interventions in cases involving human rights questions. Before joining the international public service, he practiced law as a barrister in Canada (his adoptive country) and Nigeria (his birth country). He taught international criminal law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa and has an extensive record of legal scholarship and publications, including the books International Law and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts (2013), and Protecting Humanity (2010). He is a former fellow at the Carr Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School.

On today’s episode they discuss: his journey that led him to becoming president of the ICC, why he felt it was important to write a book about the history of immunity for heads of state, his thoughts on the 2024 US Supreme Court ruling to grant immunity to US presidents, looking to the kings and emperors of the past to understand why we built international systems ending immunity, how we could enact an international law that upholds an actionable “right to peace”, and his view on Trump’s desire to annex of Canada.