When the International Criminal Court was established in 1998, the crime of aggression was identified as the supreme international crime. But countries couldn’t come to an agreement on how the crime would be defined or how the court would exercise its jurisdiction. There simply wasn’t enough time.

Those questions were revisited 12 years later, in Kampala, Uganda. Host Femi Oke talks to Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the chair of the working group on the crime of aggression, about how he used time pressure and a pep talk from legendary Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz to bridge political divisions among the negotiating parties and help them reach consensus. 

The Negotiators is a podcast from Foreign Policy and Doha Debates—and a special partner this season, the International Peace Institute.