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The Sixth Session of the UN Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Christopher Keith Hall
Christopher Keith Hall*
Affiliation:
Amnesty International
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Extract

The Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (Preparatory Committee or committee) held its sixth and final session from March 16 to April 3, 1998, at the United Nations headquarters in New York. At this session it completed its work of preparing a consolidated text of a statute for a permanent international criminal court (ICC) for adoption at a diplomatic conference in Rome held from June 15 to July 17, 1998. The consolidated text is considerably longer than the draft statute submitted by the International Law Commission to the UN General Assembly in July 1994 (ILC draft statute) and contains many different options submitted by states, but it is still largely consistent with the basic structure of the ILC draft statute.

Type
Current Developments
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 92 , Issue 3 , July 1998 , pp. 548 - 556
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1998

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References

1 For an account of the fifth session, see Christopher, Keith Hall, The Fifth Session of the UN Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court , 92 AJIL 331 (1998)Google Scholar.

2 Report of the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Part One, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/2/Add.1 (Apr. 14, 1998). Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations of the statute are from this text. The report and almost all the UN documents mentioned in this paper are available on the Internet site maintained by the NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court (NGO Coalition) (http://www.igc.apc.org/icc). The NGO Coalition coordinates the work of more than 800 NGOs around the world.

3 The ILC draft statute and commentary are found in Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its forty-sixth session, UN GAOR, 49th Sess., Supp. No. 10, at 44, UN Doc. A/49/10 (1994).

4 Despite these obstacles, before and during the final session of the committee, NGOs continued to provide governments with detailed written commentaries on proposals too numerous to mention here. They are available on the Internet site maintained by the NGO Coalition.

5 No summary records of the Preparatory Committee have been kept. This account is based on the notes of the author and the other members of the Amnesty International delegation, Aref Mohamed Aref, Karine Bonneau, Helen DeSa and Lars van Troost, as well as on the working papers, the Preparatory Committee report and excellent confidential daily summaries with information on individual government positions prepared by the NGO Coalition. Since the session was not open to the general public, individual government positions are indicated only if they are now in the public domain.

6 UN Doc. A/AC249/1998/DP.2.

7 Id.

8 June 9, 1994, 33 ILM 1529 (1994).

9 GA Res. 47/133, Dec. 18, 1992, Preamble, 32 ILM 903 (1993).

10 Statement, United States Delegation to the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (Mar. 23, 1998).

11 Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals, Nuremberg, 1946, Cmd. 6964, at 13.

12 UN Doc. A/AC.249/1998/DP.11.

13 Opening Speeches of the Chief Prosecutors, The Trial of German Major War Criminals by the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany at 46 (1946).

14 Statement of the United States Delegation on Elements of Offences 2 (Apr. 3, 1998).

15 UN Doc. A/AC249/1998/WG.3/DP.2 (the rest of this paragraph is based on this proposal).

16 For a summary of arguments advanced by states and NGOs critical of this proposal, see Human Rights Watch, Response to the Proposal of the United States Delegation for Proposed Article 11 bis (Apr. 2, 1998).

17 Prosecutor v. Blaskić, No. IT–95–14–AR–108Ws, Review of Decision of Trial Chamber II of 18 July 1997, paras. 67–69 (Oct. 29, 1997).

18 On the opening day of the final session, the Zutphen text contained about 1,700 brackets. Times (London), Mar. 30, 1998, at 14. By the end of the session, many of them had disappeared and many of those that remained were linked to others that would also vanish when a particular option was adopted.

19 Principles of Consensus, Regional Consultative Meeting on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, The Farm Inn, Pretoria (Sept. 14, 1997).

20 Dakar Declaration for the Establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998, Dakar, Senegal (Feb. 6, 1998).

21 Letter from Sen. Jesse Helms to Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright (Mar. 26, 1998) (emphasis in original).