Subject: Statement by Emma Bonino, M.P., Secretary of the Radical Party
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X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List
The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and
Humanitarian Affairs, John Shattuck, proposes to establish an ad hoc
Tribunal for tribal crimes in Rwanda. At a time in which crimes and
criminals, past and present, are frequently mentioned, justice and
international law seem to reappear as "news of the day", at least on the
level of what can be considered as good intentions. But with the help of
which instruments will these good intentions be implemented?
I am pleased that attention is drawn to the problem, but I disagree
with setting up exclusively a further ad hoc Tribunal , because I think
it is urgent to foresee and create the International Penal Court, an item
which already is scheduled in the agenda of the next U.N. General Assembly.
For this reason, next week, Radical Party and Parliamentary for Global
Action members will travel together to Geneva to ensure that the
International Law Commission adopts the draft statute and subsequently
forwards it to the General Assembly.
Ralph Zacklin, Director of the U.N.Office of the Legal Counsel,
recently said that "the Convention on Genocide provides for punishment by
the contracting parties within their own territorial jurisdiction or by the
actions of an international criminal tribunal that might have jurisdiction.
No such permanent international tribunal currently exists...The Security
Council has created a Tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, but
nothing exists that could take jurisdiction over what is happening in
Rwanda."
This matter of fact goes straight to the heart of the problem and it
should involve all those who care about the outcome of international law,
justice and human rights.
An ad hoc Tribunal for Rwanda could make us come to mind an ad hoc
Tribunal for Yemen, for the Caucasus.... Instead what we urge is a
Permanent Tribunal immediately, in order to avoid confronting, while a
genocide is taking place, the problem of respecting conventions and
therefore to assist, powerless, to massacres which do not take geographical
borders into consideration, as current events dramatically demonstrate.
