RIGHTS: War Crimes Court to Become Reality Despite US Withdrawal

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 9 2002 (IPS) - The International Criminal Court for trying cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide will begin to operate within a year, in spite of the opposition of the United States, say human rights groups.

The process of setting up the 18-justice court will continue normally, even though Washington has renounced its obligations as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the tribunal in 1998, said William R. Pace, convenor of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

The United States told the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday that it was formally withdrawing from the treaty that former U.S. president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) had signed in 2000.

The U.S. government of George W. Bush prefers to continue with the current mechanism of ad hoc tribunals for specific cases, such as those created for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which are dependent on the UN Security Council, said Pace.

The treaty for creating the new court, known as the Rome Statute as it was adopted in that city in 1998 by a UN conference, enters into force July 1 having been ratified by 66 countries.

But the court will not become operational for approximately one year because the states party to the treaty will not hold their first assembly until early September, in New York. There, they will have to approve the budget for the first 12 months and the programme for establishing the tribunal.

At that meeting, the delegates of the ratifying countries will determine the rules of procedure for the nomination and the election of the International Criminal Court’s 18 judges and the prosecutor.

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court, made up of 15 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) specialising in human rights – including Amnesty International, International Commission of Jurists and Human Rights Watch – issued a forewarning about the process.

The credibility of the designations of the court justices and the quality of the judges themselves will determine the image, the moral authority and the success of the International Criminal Court, stated coalition leader Pace.

The European Union (EU), which strongly supports the creation of the court, says it should consist of reputable judges and lawyers who have extensive knowledge of criminal, international and humanitarian law.

In addition to the general prosecutor and at least two assistants, the court will have a staff of 100 to 200 employees in the first two years.

The number of agents will double by the end of the first five years of operations, estimate the human rights NGOs.

Pace said the parameters for the calculations were based on the special courts set up for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda cases, which have approximately 400 and 900 employees, respectively.

The budget for the International Criminal Court could reach 29 million dollars, he said.

For perspective, Pace pointed out that the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) spent 11 billion dollars in 1999 on overseas military operations.

In comments directed at the United States, the EU has said that the International Criminal Court would make “the costly and cumbersome process of creating new ad hoc tribunals unnecessary.”

However, Pace reckons that the U.S. opposition to the court is based on factors beyond money. Washington is “willing to have a strong treaty as long as the United States is exempt and the United States can control the treaty,” he said.

The NGO coalition chief cited the U.S. precedents in withdrawing from international environmental treaties, disarmament treaties, children’s rights treaties – “Across the board it is abandoning multilateralism.”

The U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Marc Grossman, criticised the new tribunal, saying it “undermines the role of the UN Security Council in maintaining international peace and security.”

Pace commented that such opinions reflect the fact that the United States would only recognise a treaty that exempts it due to that country’s “extraordinary military and political role in the world.”

The other option that Washington would agree to is the subordination of the International Criminal Court to the UN Security Council, where it holds veto power.

If that were the case, the United States “would be able to restrict the court to cases that it and the other four permanent members (Britain, China, France and Russia) and the ten elected members of the Council determine need to be investigated and prosecuted,” said Pace.

The United States says it would never grant an international organisation the legal authority to try U.S. soldiers arrested for war crimes, for example, unless the court existed under the auspices of the UN Security Council.

“When we control it, we will agree do it,” is the guiding principle of the Bush government, commented the coordinator of the Coalition.

That approach is not acceptable to most other governments, he added. “Most countries see the court as an extension of their national legal systems for the purposes of trying these crimes, not as the creation of a supranational organisation.”

Over the last five years, as the court was being debated, NGO and civil society delegates in favour of the initiative visited countries around the world, with particular attention to Latin America, Africa and Asia.

“The first thing that parliamentarians would say us was ‘we cannot support it because it is going to be controlled by the United States’,” recalled Pace.

However, he pointed out a positive sign in that the International Criminal Court has been created by democratic nations.

The Freedom Foundation, a Washington-based human rights group with conservative tendencies, rated 63 of the 66 countries that ratified the Rome Statute as democratic regimes.

According to the study, it said that 74 percent of those countries are “completely free”.

EU representatives have said that when the International Criminal Court becomes operational and proves that it delivers effective and impartial administration of justice, other states not yet parties to the Rome Statute will be convinced to ratify the treaty.