LET JUSTICE BE SEEN TO BE DONE

Emma Bonino argues the case for establishing a permanent international criminal court.

We have witnessed some of the worst crimes against humanity in history over the past five years. The criminals must be tried, justice guarantees that any who contempate such acts in future face the deterrent of a permanent international crime court.

In July, I joined 6.000 women in Tutzla, 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 horrible atrocities in former Yugoslavia's dirty war.

In tutzla, now home to about 30.000 survivors of Srebrenica we watched film footage of the day when Ratko Mladic's men rounded up women and children, hussing them away while hearding the men to their deaths. The women have survived, but they and their children will never be at peace until the killers are broght to justice.

In 1993, the United Nations Security Ciouncil bowed to public pressure and set up an ad'hoc tribunal to try crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia. The UN has set up a separate temporary tribunals of Nurberg and Tokyo, thesse two ad hoc tribunals will eventually be dissolved.

In 1945, qfter the second World Wqr, people thougt: never qgain. They believed they had seen the end of such atrocities. Not so. Since the end of rhe Cold War, the barbarity of crimes committed against civilians has not creased to horrify us, particularly as we can now see the evidence pratically in real time on our TV screens.

Societies shattered by such nightmares cannot resume more than a semblance of normal life unless there is a record of what happened unless the guilty are broght 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 must take the initiative, we must act in advance, by setting up a permanent international criminal court. I f we believe what we say when we sign international declarations of respect of human rights, an international court to guarantee justice and to deter potential criminals is a logical outcome.

I bilieve such a court could make a significant contriburion to enabling reconciliation after conflicts, and even to prevention, up to a point. So why do we not have such a court already? The idea is hardly new, but it got shelved during tac Cold War. It is back on the agenda at the United Nations today.

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