For a week, we'd soaked up the history. We'd taken in the grand monuments, palaces and broad boulevards of Paris. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre's Sacred Heart Basilica and, of course, the rebuilt Notre Dame. And lingered in the narrow cobblestoned lanes of Le Marais and the Latin Quarter.

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History echoed too on the bus ride north through Belgium to The Netherlands as road signs pointing to Mons, Ghent, Antwerp and Rotterdam, brought to mind the battles and bloodshed of last century's two world wars.

Amid all this a much more modern highlight. A glass and steel structure comprising six blocks rising out of the Meijendel dunes completed in 2015 but marking an important moment in human history. It's the permanent home of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. A line in the sand, if you like, where impunity for crimes against humanity ends and the rules based order takes a stand.

We'd been waiting for our day in court for more than a year, ever since plans for a European holiday were first hatched.

A Master in International Relations, she teaches legal studies to HSC students, a component of which is international law. My interest stems from my own studies and a lifetime watching despots and demagogues getting away with murder. Until, that is, the ICC began catching up with them.

A relatively new global institution, established in 2002 under the Rome Statute, the ICC - a direct descendant of the post-war Nuremberg Trials - is the first and only international court to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and acts of aggression. Among those for whom it has current arrest warrants are Vladimir Putin and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.

The court's international nature becomes apparent as you enter. A Brit checks her passport, a Dutch man checks mine. A French man screens our bags and we're met at the reception desk by an Indonesian woman. Behind her, the flags of the 124 member nations, including Australia's. Notably absent, the flags of the US, Russia, Israel, China and India.

There are no sittings on the day we visit but an often harrowing interactive display explains the workings of the court, how evidence is gathered, witnesses are treated and the accused defended. The testimonies of witnesses who have been subjected to terrible crimes are........

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