Fragmentation of International Criminal Law in the Context of Global Governance: Manifestations, Negative Impacts, and Pathways to System Integration

The concept of international criminal law has developed rapidly. The emergence of relevant institutions-from the ad hoc tribunals of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC)-has enhanced governance measures to address transnational atrocities, but it has also led to fragmentation characterized by normative conflicts, functional overlaps and enforcement gaps. With globalization, the disintegration of the international criminal law undermines the global governance. This paper examines particular expressions of fragmentation at rule, institutional, jurisdiction, and implementation levelsand evaluates the adverse effects of fragmentation on enforcement effectiveness, coordinated governance and international fairness. In this paper, the comparative research approach is adopted to prove such issues as treatsy-based discrepancies in crime definitions, judicial inconsistencies due to inconsistent enforcement of soft and hard law, selective prosecution due to jurisdictional conflicts and accountability gaps in new fields of cybercrime and AI-driven offenses. To control these concerns, the proposals comprise developing the bodies of authority to interpret the soft law, quickening the process of the soft law being converted to hard law by instituting regional pilot programs, the adoption of the tiered jurisdiction system, homogenizing evidence, and introducing the global level of training. The goals of these strategies are to overcome interpretative disagreements, increase cooperation internationally, revitalize judicial fairness and promote equity of international criminal law.