There is a chance that the idea of an International Criminal Court (ICC) will soon become reality once negotiations to constitute it are concluded at a diplomatic conference scheduled in Rome in the summer of 1998.

In the period between the two world wars, there were several attempts to set up an international tribunal to try the German Emperor and other people responsible for assassination and genocide, including terrorism. But with no State ratifying a treaty for an international criminal court, the momentum for the initative slackened.

After the Second World War, the establishment of the Nüremberg and Tokyo international military tribunals to try the leaders of the Nazi and Japanese regimes revived the debate. In the 1948 Genocide Convention, the United Nations General Assembly mentioned for the first time the need to study the creation of an international criminal court for one specific crime—genocide. In the 1950s, the International Law Commission (ILC) was mandated to codify the Nüremberg principles and to prepare a draft statute to create an international criminal court with a jurisdiction comparable to that of the Nüremberg Tribunal. And at the end of the cold war, Trinidad and Tobago proposed to the United Nations an international criminal court to try drug traffickers.

In 1992, the General Assembly instructed the ILC to direct its attention to the creation of a permanent international criminal court. The creation of two ad hoc international tribunals by the Security Council—for crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, respectively—spurred the Commission and in 1994 it produced a Draft Statute, which was referred to the General Assembly for consideration.

A Preparatory Committee was established to discuss issues related to this and to "draft texts, with a view to preparing a widely acceptable consolidated text of a convention for an international criminal court as a next step towards consideration by a conference of plenipotentiaries". The Preparatory Committee will have had six meetings in preparation for the Rome conference.

Because the General Assembly has taken the initiative to establish an international criminal court, it is possible for all the Member States and States or organizations with an observer status to participate in the considerations about the Court. But not all the preparations take place during the General Assembly session. Meetings of the Ad Hoc and the Preparatory Committees were and will be held at other times. Delegations of developing countries are therefore not always able to attend the discussions. They simply do not have the resources to send their representatives around the world for every meeting. This means that they may have less influence on the establishment of this important international judicial institution, although it will affect them as much as it will affect the developed countries.

To overcome this problem, the Secretary-General has established a trust fund for the participation of the least developed countries in the work of the Preparatory Committee and in the diplomatic conference of plenipotentiaries. Contributions to the fund have been made by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. As of 14 August 1997, $300,000 has been received by the fund, and 12 States have used it to participate in the last session of the Preparatory Committee.

As one can imagine, not only Member States have interest in the establishment of the ICC. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocate the creation of the Court as well. A wide range of NGOs will see their subject of interest affected by the establishment of the Court. The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the first that comes to mind, with its representative on the Sixth and Preparatory Committees. But NGOs with interests in human rights, international law, peace, humanitarian affairs, religion, women's rights, health and other subjects are also in favour of the Court. They attend the open meetings of the Committees and send delegations with extensive commentaries on the Draft Statute.

Bringing this broad-based network of NGOs together is the NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court (CICC), with more than 300 members. The CICC's main purpose is to advocate the creation of an effective and just ICC, and brings NGOs together with international law experts to develop strategies on substantive legal and political issues relating to the proposed statute. Apart from this, it also maintains a webpage on the Internet, facilitates meetings between the Coalition and representatives of Governments as well as UN officials. It also promotes education and awareness of the ICC proposals and the negotiations at public and professional conferences.

During meetings of the Sixth Committee in 1997, Member States have stressed the importance of the NGOs participating in the diplomatic conference according to modalities laid down in UN resolutions.

Why?

A permanent international criminal court is needed because there are various crimes which are not committed by a group of persons from the same State, nor within the borders of one State or against the civilians of one State. Wars, for example, have been and still are fought across borders; and acts of genocide are by definition not committed against citizens of a single State, but rather against transborder ethnic groups or peoples. These crimes are defined in international law and because there are numerous difficulties in prosecuting those responsible for such crimes before national criminal courts, an international criminal court is needed to bring these people to justice. Although the chance of establishing a court with universal participation is not great and the possibility will always remain that criminals could escape the court's jurisdiction by fleeing to a State that is not a member to the Statute, the chance that justice will be done if an international criminal court is established becomes more realistic. Why should such a court be permanent? Is the establishment of a temporary court or tribunal not enough? Until now, the international community has only established tribunals or courts for one specific event and with a mandate for a period of time, such as the Nuremberg international military tribunal or the ad hoc international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The disadvantages of such tribunals are obvious. Before it can exercise its jurisdiction, there has to be broad agreement that an international tribunal is wanted and is established by treaty or a resolution of the Security Council. Each court or tribunal needs its own expert staff, which requires a lot of money and investment in expertise. And it is only used once. Those conflicts or crimes, which are not "worth" an international tribunal, will remain unpunished.