Volume 2, Number 18

February 26, 1999

United Nations Continues Negotiations on Specifics of International Criminal Court

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM)  Last summer in Rome, 120 nations voted to establish the first ever International Criminal Court (ICC). When the conference ended, however, many important details were left unresolved. The UN General Assembly empowered a preparatory commission  (prepcom) to meet over the next year or more to iron out these details. The prepcom is finishing its an important two-week session today at UN headquarters in New York City.

     The ICC will have power to prosecute individuals in four broad areas; crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and aggression. ICC proponents have promised from the start that the court will only go after the worst kind international criminals, those on the magnitude of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. ICC skeptics charge the court's proponents with political bias, and they worry that certain left-wing ideological strains will appear in the final court statutes and procedures. Only last summer radical feminists almost got abortion-on-demand into the document under the guise of the term "enforced pregnancy."

     During this preparatory process, there has been worry that the original document would be re-opened for negotiation. Few countries were completely pleased with the outcome of the document coming out of Rome, yet no delegations have yet tried to move beyond this prepcom's very narrow range of procedural issues.

     Over the past two weeks the ICC prepcom has dealt with two broad and important details of the court; the "elements of crime," and the "rules of procedure and evidence." "Elements of crime" relates to the component parts that go into an indictable act. "Rules of procedure and evidence" govern the actions of the prosecutor leading up to and during a criminal trial.

     Pro-life legal analysts following the meetings this week insist there are many areas for concern. Chief among them is the charge first leveled last summer in Rome that much of the language in the statues are intentionally and dangerously vague. An important legal adage says a person cannot be convicted of a crime without explicit and specific promulgation of the elements of the crime. This means the suspect must have complete understanding of the crime with which he is being charged, and that the prosecutor is tied to already agreed upon legal elements. Some architects of the ICC are charged,  however, with wanting to keep the court language as vague and confusing as possible. Linguistic vagueness makes it easier for prosecutors to change the legal concepts to include crimes of a more ideological nature.

     In the ICC criminal statutes, the term "sexual violence," for instance, already is included as an aspect of the crime of rape. UN feminists want the term of "sexual violence" to be listed separately as a crime, and they want to keep it undefined. Pro-life criminal lawyers point out this is a recipe for abuse. Even legal representatives from the Clinton Administration insist vague terms like this must go.  

     The ICC prepcom convenes again for three weeks beginning July 26 in New York City. 

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