Oct. 28, 1996

Statement by Prof. Paula Escarameia

Mr. Chairman,

[...] Stating that the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court is long overdue is, regrettably, a question of fact and not of opinion. Several thousand victims of genocide and other extremely serious crimes are evidence of that. Our world has not done much to deter perpetrators since the only international courts dealing with this issue were, so far, those of Nuremberg and Tokyo and, more recently, the Tribunals for former-Yugoslavia and Rwanda. They have all been one-time efforts to remedy large scale evils already perpetrated. The ICC will have a fundamental preventive function, so far lacking, of deterring potential perpetrators from committing crimes. However, if the Court we are about to establish were to be subject to political influences, it would probably add to impunity a component of unfairness, since it would only be able to convict the least serious of the international criminals.

For these reasons and because my delegation believes that the progress achieved in the Ad Hoc and the Preparatory Committees has been significant, Portugal thinks that a conference of Plenipotentiaries should be convened immediately following the end of the work of the Preparatory Committee, in April 1998. The conditions are ripe and this conference is long overdue.