Tomoko Akane

The native form of this personal name is Akane Tomoko. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Tomoko Akane
赤根 智子
File:Judge Tomoko Akane, President of the International Criminal Court - 20250319 EP-182157A LD1 0179.jpg Akane in 2025
6th President of the International Criminal Court
Incumbent
Assumed office 11 March 2024
Appointed by	Judges of the ICC
Preceded by	Piotr Hofmański
Judge of the International Criminal Court
Incumbent
Assumed office 11 March 2018
Nominated by	Japan
Appointed by	Assembly of States Parties
Personal details
Born	(1956-06-28) 28 June 1956 Nagoya, Japan
Alma mater	University of Tokyo
Signature	File:Tomoko Akane signature 20201106.png

Tomoko Akane (赤根 智子, Akane Tomoko) is a Japanese jurist and current judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Japan, as well as the president of the court.

Professional career

After graduating from the University of Tokyo, she became a public prosecutor in 1982. During her career, she assumed posts at different levels of the justice system. She chose to become a public prosecutor due to the lack of opportunities the private sector provided for women and prosecutor since she wanted to be involved in serving justice to victims and criminals. Akane was the chief prosecutor of the Hakodate district in Hokkaido between 2010 and 2012, and became a prosecutor at the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office in 2012.

Akane was also a professor in criminal justice practice at both the Chukyo University Law School and the Nagoya University Law School between 2005 and 2009. In Nagoya, she was also researching in the field of criminal justice reform between 2005 and 2006. She was the head of the International Cooperation Department (ICD) in the Japanese Ministry of Justice between 2009 and 2010. She was involved in the activities of the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (UNAFEI) for more than seven years and served as the director of the UNAFEI between July 2013 and October 2014. From 2014 to 2016, she was the director-general of the Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice. From 2016 until joining the ICC, she served as Japan's ambassador for international judicial cooperation.

Fields involved

Akane reports to valuing the ability of judicial systems in preventing people from reoffending. During her work for the UNAFEI, she was twice deployed to Kenya, where she was involved in the training of probation officers.

Judge at the International Criminal Court

She was nominated as a candidate to the ICC in April 2016 by the Government of Japan and elected as a judge of the ICC on the 4 December 2017 by the Assembly of State Parties in New York. She assumed her post in March 2018 for a tenure of nine years. As a judge at the ICC she is mainly assigned to Pre-Trial Chamber II.

On 20 March 2023, Russia initiated a criminal investigation against Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez in response to an arrest warrant issued on 17 March 2023 against its president Vladimir Putin for the unlawful deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia during the Russian-Ukrainian war. In July 2023, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a warrant for her arrest.

She said in an interview with a Japanese TV station: "Even if one of the judges dies, they can be replaced by any number of people, so it's not worth going after them. I think."

In March 2024 she was elected President of the International Criminal Court for the term 2024–2027 by the judges of the ICC.

Personal life

She is fluent in Japanese and English.