The International Herald Tribune

Editorials/Opinions

Tuesday, July 28, 1998

AT LAST, A COURT TO DETER DESPOTS AND DEFEND VICTIMS

By Kofi Annan

United Nations, New York - Saturday, July 18, was indeed a historic day. As I stood in the Campidoglio in Rome, it was my privilege to hand over to the Italian government the statute of the future International Criminal Court.

Two millennia before, in that same city, one of the most famous of all Romans, Marcus Tullius Cicero, declared that "in the midst of arms, law stands mute." From Cicero's time to our own, his bleak statement has largely held true.

But in the future it should be less true than in the past.

Until now, when powerful men committed crimes against humanity, they knew that so long as they remained powerful, no earthly court could judge them. Even when they are judged, as happily some of the worst criminals were in 1945, they can claim that this is happening only because others have proved more powerful, and so are able to sit in judgment on them. Verdicts intended to uphold the rights of the weak and helpless can be impugned as "victory' justice."

Such accusation can also be made, however unjustly, when courts are set up only ad hoc, like the tribunals in The Hague and in Arusha, to deal with crimes committed in specific conflicts by specific regimes.

That is certainly better than nothing, but such arrangements can be taken by some to imply that the same crimes, committed by different people, or at different times and places, will go unpunished.

Now at last, thanks to the hard work that went into the Rome conference, we shall have a permanent court to judge those accused of genocide and other comparable crimes, wherever and whenever they may be committed.

For the United Nations, this is especially important. We never forget that our organization was founded as part of a global struggle against regimes guilty of mass murder on a horrendous scale. And unhappily, in Bosnia and Rwanda, we have had to deal all too recently with new crimes of the same appalling nature, if not quite of the same magnitude.

Adopting this statute was not easy. The idea of such a court has been on the UN agenda ever since 1948, when the General Assembly decided to move beyond the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, asking the International law Commission to study the possibility of establishing a permanent court.

In this area, as in so many, the Cold War for a long time prevent further progress. Even when the Cold war ended, there were many legal and political problems to be overcome. Right up to the last day of the Rome conference, painful compromises had to be thrashed out - and even then the result was not unanimous.

Many of us would have liked a court with even more far-reaching powers. And many of us would have liked it to enjoy the full support of all the great powers from its inception. But I am confident that in time even those who now have misgivings will come to realize the value of this great new instrument of international justice.

Meanwhile, let us not minimize the break through which has been achieved. Only a few years ago, no one would have thought it possible.

The court that is now to be established will have its own independent prosecutor, who will not be beholden to any state, however powerful. Such a court should serve the overriding interest of the victims, and of the international community as a whole.

In this year of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have taken a monumental step forward in the march toward universal human rights and the rule of law. It is a gift of hope to future generations that they may be spared the terrible crimes from which earlier ones have suffered.

The statute is now open for signature, and some states have already signed it. IT will remain open until Dec. 31, 2000. I hope that by then a large majority of UN member states will have ratified it, so that the International Criminal Court will have unquestioned authority and the widest possible jurisdiction

May it serve mankind well in generations to come.

International Herald Tribune.