Judges at the International Criminal Court urged the UN Security Council to "take the necessary measures" to tackle Sudan's persistent refusal to arrest the country's president and send him to The Hague to stand trial on charges of orchestrating genocide in Darfur.
It was the Security Council that urged the court in 2005 to investigate widespread atrocities in Darfur a move that led to President Omar al-Bashir being charged with genocide.
Darfur was plunged into turmoil in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum, accusing it of discrimination. The UN says 300,000 people have died in the conflict and 2.7 million have fled their homes.
Underscoring a growing frustration at the court over the lack of support from the Security Council, the judges stressed Monday that "if there is no follow-up action" by the council in cases it sends to the court, any referral "would never achieve its ultimate goal, namely, to put an end to impunity."
The International Criminal Court has no police force of its own and has to rely on member states to help arrest suspects.
Sudan is not a member state, but is under an obligation to cooperate under the Security Council resolution that sent the Darfur case to the court. Even so, Khartoum has stonewalled the court for years.
"Sudan has failed to cooperate with the Court by constantly refusing to engage in any sort of dialogue with the responsible organs of the Court over the past six years and to execute the pending requests for the arrest and surrender" of al-Bashir, according to a statement by the court.
Al-Bashir has traveled freely to some African countries that are parties to the statute that created the ICC but have refused to arrest him.
In December, the court's prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, told the Security Council she was halting her investigations in Darfur because no one has been brought to justice in a decade and the council has done little to help.
