UNITED NATIONS/CONFERENCE ON THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: SPEECH OF EMMA BONINO

New York, December 1, 1997

Thank you David, and thank you to all of you. Let me just say that it is a great privilege to address such a distinguished audience, and to do so on an issue that is very dear to my heart. For many years, even before becoming Commissioner of Humanitarian Aid, when I was running as a Secretary General at the Transnational Radical Party, the ad hoc tribunal and the permanent tribunal were one of the priority issues of our political program. At that time, 1989, our fellow colleagues in politics were looking at us as dreamers, or even worse than that, utopians. We simply had a vision and I don't know any other thing that is more concrete than ideas.

I know that normally my colleague politicians think exactly the opposite, and if there is a phrase that I cannot stand anymore, it gives me a lot of uneasiness when I listen to it, it is "try to be realistic." This is something under which you can see every kind of excuse: national interest, economic interests, geopolitical or strategic priority, whatever. That is called being realistic. I was encouraged recently because I heard a very influential U.S. Under Secretary of State, on this side of the Atlantic, claiming for once that the real realism is to have a foreign policy based on value, and not on interest, because that is the only foreign policy that can afford sustainability and so, fighting for human rights and democracy is not only for somebody who is particularly idealistic, but should become the basis of the ones who practice "realpolitik".

I do not for a moment underestimate the systemic difficulties and legal and political problems that still have to be overcome in the process. Yet it seems to me that the momentum is building, which can make even the most suspicious delegates think twice before raising obstruction on the way to the creation of a jurisdiction whose role is now felt useful and necessary by the vast majority of UN members.

In fact, you know very well from working in the UN, that very few states now dare to say openly that they don't like the idea. And I want to pay tribute to these kinds of states, because they speak their minds openly and in a transparent way. What worries me much more is states which do not like the idea, but do not dare to say it openly, and are looking for a juridical alibi or juridical problem that certainly exists, but, in my experience I know that with some kind of political will this kind of problem can be easily overcome - easy in a political sense. And it's not up to the jurists to find the solution to political problems. I like my jurist colleagues very much but I also must confess that sometimes you invent problems instead of inventing solution, not because you are bad, but for exactly the contrary, and because that can be useful to somebody who wants to resist the idea and instead of saying it openly is instead trying simply to build up problems after problems instead of trying to look for solutio

ns.

I think that this is an important picture to take: who is really against whatever they say, so that we can finally have a target? And I think that this is, in few words, the case of the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In any case, we have come a long way, as President Robinson was telling us of the history of this issue, and I think hat we have come a long way in a relatively short time. In any kind of international organization, let alone the UN, six or seven years is a very short time. Public opinion can be impatient to such a long time, but in international organizations six years is supposed to be a very short time.

We can take strengths and courage from the step that we have already overcome, not because the way in front of us is less than problematic. Professor Bassiouni was already referring to the steps of the conference, and then ratification and then implementation, and then and then and then, but if we look just for a moment at 1991 and 1992 when to talk frankly of a permanent court was something which was supposed to be a dream, I think that looking backward we can take courage and enthusiasm for going forward. [...]

The second issue is that what we are witnessing nowadays, and I'm talking from my institutional responsibilities, is that the quality, the real essence of war, has changed in the last ten years. We are witnessing, after the Cold War, a new kind of war where civilians are not the casualties, but are the real target. And civilians are mostly women and children. War now does not target the basic infrastructure, or the airport or the taking of that particular bridge, and, in so doing conquering a territory. Now we are facing another kind of war, in which for ethnic or religious reasons, or for power struggle, the civilians, and mostly the women and children have become the real target. That is the only way to explain the mass rape campaign in Bosnia. It was planned and organized, and it was a war tool exactly like a Kalashnikov or others. The problem is that it was targeting a particular group of people. That's not different than Africa, or Kabul, where there is no religion at stake, no tradition - that is not t

he issue. The issue is a power struggle which has as its first victim girls and children in a sort of gender apartheid that is existing at the eve of the year 2000.

For all these reasons - somebody is -,saying, for instance, that we are more sensible to these kinds of issues, and they are referring to the result of a so-called CNN effect - let me tell you that I absolutely disagree with this way of thinking. I think that, on the contrary, that we should all be grateful to the global village for relaying those images in real time, like any other. A picture has never killed anyone. Wars are not caused by CNN or RAI. I would like to see more reports on these crises, and I would not live in a world where no one knows what is happening. And again, no reportage and no picture has ever killed a child, and if we think like that and if we accept that kind of justification of a scenario we are just having the world upside down. they are simply reporting what is happening in a way in which no one can simply say "I didn't know" or "we didn't know," particularly at the political level.

For these reasons, I do think that we have already seen, and it has been tragic enough for the international community to let so many tragedies unfold almost unchecked. And the leading criminals against humanity at large, and who are unpunished, simply because no mechanism existed to prosecute them, would have been a fatal failure for the community of nations and for the UN system which stands for it. I think that this meeting, and all the campaigns, are important for two reasons: on the substance, because of the idea, which is mostly needed, but also let me tell you that is very important as a procedure and as a methodology of joining forces and challenging the institutions day by day, be it the European Union, be it the European Commission, or the UN.

We now have two campaigns which were started by organized groups of citizens coming to some effect. Tomorrow in Ottawa, one hundred member states under pressure from public opinion groups, NGOs, will gather in Ottawa to finally sign a ban on all land mines. Yes, not all member states of the UN are already on board, but I hope that this dynamic will push the member states to come on board this convention, because if we talk of humanitarian crisis, land mines do not listen. When peace has come they continue to kill. So, I think that all of us bear responsibility for that.. And I think that this is another campaign in which organized groups of citizens, organized public opinion in some, and have been able to take the momentum, and the momentum was there in the early 90's, but I think ifs important that somebody took the flag of this campaign, and the flag of this idea, so that in this permanent debate and dialogue, and sometimes confrontation between public opinion and institutions, I see, in this method, a rea

l development of democratic dialogue and democratic relations between people and the institutions.

For these two reasons, we owe this idea to the victims, because during this years we have learned so many things about institutions and public opinion. You know I work in an institution, of which I am very proud by the way, I know that without being challenged day by day by moral requests and public opinion, institutions have this terrible tendency to get absolutely introverted and to d their own business instead of minding the people's business and peoples request and moral value.

Without being absolutely "idealpolitik", but being exactly realistic, in a realism which can combine interest and value, I think that this campaign and this issue can bring a change in the culture on which we think on relation among states and relation among people and among citizens. As I said, we have gone a long way. but the way ahead is even longer. It depends also on us, if we will be effective enough to lobby the resistant countries and the resistant member states, to spread this idea in public opinion, to try to convince the ones that are still spectacle, without giving too many illusions as Professor Bassiouni said., I don't think for a moment that the permanent court is the solution for every problem in the world. I am not so naive. I am simply saying that it is a powerful tool that is needed to be added to the political and diplomatic tools that already that, I hope that other member states will join forces and be more committed to this idea. I have to pay tribute to the different Italian governmen

ts that since 1992 have been supportive and committed to this campaign. I hope to see all of you in Rome in June, but I hope that we will be together in further initiatives, In some way we are at the edge off getting an effective court or getting an empty box. And frankly, our responsibility is also at stake at this particular moment.