The International Criminal Court

The Alexander barracks stood on this ground, a complex from 1938 that housed cavalry and later accommodated military staff who worked elsewhere in the city. The barracks were demolished to make room for this building.

 

The International Criminal Court was founded in 1998 with the Rome Statute and began work four years later. It tries individuals rather than states, and deals with four crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. For its first years the court worked from rented offices in the city. In December 2015 it moved into this building, designed by a Danish practice that won a competition entered by a hundred and seventy-one architectural firms.

 

Suspects awaiting trial are held further along the Van Alkemadelaan, in the cell block of the Scheveningen prison where the occupier held prisoners of his own between 1940 and 1945. Some of the crimes this court was created to judge were first named as such in those same years.

 

Behind the building the Oude Waalsdorperweg runs into the dunes, towards the Waalsdorpervlakte, where more than two hundred and fifty prisoners from the Orange Hotel were shot.