26 Oct. 1996

URGENT: A GLOBAL CRIMINAL COURT

by Emma Bonino

Over the past five years we have witnessed some of the worst crimes against humanity in history.

The criminals must be tried, justice must be done. And we need guarantees that any who contemplate such acts in the future face the deterrent of a permanent criminal court.

In July, I joined 6,000 women in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, for a grim anniversary: the massacre of their menfolk a year earlier in Srebrenica at the hands of Bosnian Serbs. About 8,000 men and boys died in one of the most horrifying atrocities in the former Yugoslavia's dirty war. In Tuzla, now home to about 30,000 survivors of Sebrenica, we watched film footage of the day when Ratko Mladic's men rounded up the women and bused them away while herding the men to their deaths. The women have survived, but they and their children will never be at peace until the killers are brought to justice.

In 1993, the UN Security Council bowed to public pressure and set up an ad hoc tribunal to try crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia. The UN also set up a separate temporary tribunal to try those accused of genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Like the war crimes tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, these two tribunals eventually will be dissolved.

In 1945, people thought they had seen the end of atrocities. Not so. Since the end of the Cold War, The intensifying barbarity of crimes committed against civilians around the world has not ceased to horrify us, particularly as we can now see the evidence practically in real time on our television screens.

Societies shattered bu such nightmares cannot resume more than just a semblance of normal life unless there is a record for what happened, unless the guilty are brought to justice and punished, unless the innocent are cleared. Without justice, generation after generation is condemned to an existence haunted by the terrors of the past.

We all hope there will be no next time. But if there is, what then? Another ad hoc tribunal, then another?

It is to take the initiative, to act in evidence by setting up a permanent international criminal court. If we believe what we say when we sign international declarations of respect for human rights, an international court to guarantee justice and to deter potential criminals is a logical step.

I believe such a court could make a significant contribution to enabling reconciliation after conflicts, and even to preventing them, up to a point.

Why do we have such a court already? The idea, hardly new, was shelved during the Cold War. But today it is back on the agenda at the United Nations.

A preparatory committee working on the project is reporting to the UN on the Oct. 28-29. It will ask to continue its work, with a view to calling a conference by the end of 1998 to establish an international criminal court.

There must be no foot-dragging. Such a court would do nothing to bring back those who died in Rwanda or Yugoslavia. But we live in a world where the present shows clearly that we need a deterrent for the future. We must act now.