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New technology and strategies are helping to deliver justice to victims of grave violations of human rights in Libya, including fresh arrest warrants, but “we can do better”, the chief prosecutor of the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) told the Security Council on Thursday.

Trying the gravest crimes, involving victims, ensuring fair trials, complementing national tribunals: in its first 20 years of existence, the International Criminal Court has made notable progress in its crucial mission. 

Grave rights violations against anti-government protesters in Venezuela, “amounted to crimes against humanity”, UN-appointed rights investigators said in their first report on abuses inside the Latin American nation.

Responding to the decision of the United States Government to sanction International Criminal Court (ICC) officials and their family members, O-Gon Kwon, President of the Assembly of States Parties, the body that oversees the ICC, denounced the measures which, he said, undermine the “endeavour to fight impunity and to ensure accountability for mass atrocities”.

The arrest of Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, commonly known as Ali Kushayb, an alleged former Janjaweed militia leader in the restive Darfur region of Sudan, has been hailed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as an “extremely significant development”.

Unabated violence, particularly in and around the Libyan capital, has now been raging for more than a year, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) told the Security Council in a virtual briefing on Tuesday, warning that war crimes may have been committed.

A recap of Thursday’s UN News stories: ‘Terminator’ warlord handed 30-year sentence; UN chief calls for ‘meaningful dialogue’ in Iraq; Disease slashes global meat output; Hostilities in northeast Syria a grave concern; and how the Montreal Protocol is impacting the food chain.

Libya remains entangled in a “cycle of violence, atrocities and impunity”, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UN Security Council on Wednesday, nearly a decade since the Court began its work in the country.