RIGHTS: Activists See Early Establishment of International Criminal Court

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Aug 4 2000 (IPS) - There is a growing sense of optimism among human rights advocates and legal experts that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be established in a few years.

Such confidence stems from moves underway in many countries to amend their domestic criminal laws and military codes to fall in line with international humanitarian and human rights law, which the ICC will uphold. These amendments are necessary for countries to ratify the Rome Statute that establishes the ICC.

“The European Union has expressed its common will to produce the ratifications of its 15 member states by the end of 2000,” says Eduardo Gonzalez-Cueva, a co-ordinator for the Coalition for an International Criminal Court (CICC), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has in its ranks over 800 civil society groups of legal and political persuasions.

Adds Brigitte Suhr, a legal expert at the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), “In Latin America support has been impressive and constantly growing.” Currently, the bill of ratification is before parliaments in six countries – Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Furthermore, they reveal, countries in southern Africa and Francophone Africa have also expressed their support for early ratification of the ICC. The Southern African Development Community, for instance, has prepared a model bill of ratification for all its 14 members.

But that is all not that is being done to secure more support for this treaty, which was adopted in July 1998, after 120 countries voted in favour for it. Last month, in fact, as the world marked the second anniversary of the adoption of this treaty, the CICC launched a global campaign to get other countries to join the 14 nations that have ratified it. These countries include Canada, Italy, Ghana, Senegal, Venezuela and Fiji.

What the campaign seeks are the required 60 ratifications for this treaty to enter into force by 2002, three years ahead of schedule.

Those championing the creation of a global criminal court regard it as the best legal forum to deal with serious violations of international humanitarian law perpetrated by individuals, such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile, for instance, or Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.

Once established, the court will have the authority to try those responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as “widespread or systematic extermination of civilians,” enslavement, torture, rape, forced pregnancy, persecutions on political or racial lines and disappearances.

According to the Rome Statute, furthermore, while cases can be referred to the court by any state, the court’s prosecutor, too, can initiate an “investigation into a crime that has come to his or her attention.”

And unlike the two recent war crimes tribunals, in Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the court’s jurisdiction will not be chronologically or geographically limited.

Not all countries have welcomed the idea of such a court, which was mooted in 1948, following the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II.

“Some critics think the ICC will be, at best, an ineffective body, and at worst, a dangerous threat to national sovereignty,” states the United Nations Department of Public Information.

For Geoffrey Robertson, author of ‘Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice,’ the presence of the United States among those critical of the ICC represents “a great paradox,” given the claims made by that country regarding its role as a protector of human rights.

The most recent display of the stance that the United States should have little to do with the ICC surfaced last week during a hearing in the US Congress on the issue.

According to Lawrence Eagleburger, a former US Secretary of State, the creation of a global criminal court “is both illegitimate and illegal.”

“We are probably far better off right now by saying we want nothing to do with it,” he added, during his appearance before the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.

And prior to that, the United States threatened to walk away from the last round of negotiations on the Rules of Procedure and Evidence for the ICC after failing to get its way. During that June encounter, the United States once again made a strong effort for an amendment that would exempt its nationals from the court’s jurisdiction.

For activists like Gonzalez-Cueva, the US position hardly comes as a surprise, since it was one among seven countries that voted against the creation of the ICC in 1998. Its allies on that occasion included China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen.

In fact, argues Gonzalez-Cueva, the US position is “unreasonable, unnecessary and illegal” in its attempt to look for “100 percent immunity for US citizens before the court.”

According to him, the United States cannot expect to be a world leader in human rights and, at the same time, “pretend to be judged by a different standard than the one applied to the rest of the world community.”

What is more, he reveals, the United States has “exerted enormous pressure over poor countries to bully them into not ratifying the Statute.” And this position, he adds, has the backing of senior senators from the Republican party, who “have made clear their intention to destroy the Court.”

Despite such pressure, Suhr feels the ratification process is very much on course. “The fact that states continue to ratify at such a rate or continue to prepare for ratification undaunted by the pressure of the US indicates enormous commitment to the establishment of the Court.”

In addition, she says, many countries “are vigilant” that basic principles already agreed upon in the statute cannot be amended now to benefit the United States. Eventually, she predicts, the US will have to recognise that the Court will come into effect soon, with or without its support.