Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished delegates,

Allow me at the outset to congratulate you, Mr. President, on your election to this high post, as well as other members of the Bureau and to express appreciation to the Government of Italy for hosting this conference. Hopefully it will prove to be one of the most important codification conferences of the decades, and we shall succeed, at the end of it, in adopting a Statute of a future permanent, just and efficient, International Criminal Court.

Slovenia has been actively supporting the establishment of the International Criminal Court throughout the preparatory process and will continue to do so during the present conference, being deeply convinced that not just any kind of court will do, but only a fair, efficient and independent one.

The reasons why we need such a strong and credible court are many and convincing, and have been stated many times during the last 50 years since the United Nations began considering the idea of establishing a supra-national criminal court. However, the most important and most compelling reasons stem from the many and massive occurrences of the gravest of crimes that the world has unfortunately witnessed during these last 50 years. The many victims of the atrocities all too often lacked an efficient means of recourse and the crimes committed have been left unpunished. Bringing to justice the perpetrators of the most serious international crimes (namely the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity) is necessary in order to ensure the end to impunity and to enable the process of rehabilitation of the individual victims as well as the war-torn societies. If justice will be served this will also send a clear signal to any possible to-be perpetrators of such crimes. Justice is the best guarantee of durability of peace.

The International Criminal Court must be an independent and strong judicial institution. A weak Court that would be subjected to inappropriate political interferences will not be able to achieve the necessary efficiency nor credibility. For it to be able to act efficiently and independently wherever the ultimate interests of justice and humanity so demand, some basic elements have to be ensured and I would briefly like to address those that in our view constitute the necessary pre-conditions for the proper and credible functioning of the Court:

It is important to keep in mind the underlying principle of the international court - namely the primacy of the rights and duties of states themselves to investigate and prosecute crimes committed under international law. However, when they fail to do so, be it for reasons of deliberate unwillingness or unintended inability, an international mechanism must be available. Thus the Court will only be complementary to national courts.

The Court should have inherent jurisdiction over the three core crimes - crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The states should therefore accept its jurisdiction by ratification of the Statute without there being need for any subsequent consent and without applying an opting system.

Slovenia also favours the inclusion of the crime of aggression within the Court’s jurisdiction.

The proceedings before the Court should be triggered by States as well as by the UN Security Council, and by an independent prosecutor who should be empowered to initiate investigations and institute proceedings on his or her own initiative. The prosecutor should be able, to this end, to use information from any source. Thus the victims, as well as other governmental and non-governmental actors, would be afforded the opportunity to alert the prosecutor of the commission of a crime.

One of the characteristics of contemporary armed conflicts is that they disproportionately affect the civilian population , particularly women and children, and increasingly so, since the recent examples show that internal armed conflicts are on the increase or, in some cases, such as the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that it is very difficult to find a political consensus on the nature of the conflict. Clearly the victims require adequate protection regardless of the international or internal nature of the conflict. The Court should therefore also have jurisdiction over war crimes committed in armed conflicts of a non-international character and without applying a threshold in terms of their planned or large-scale commission.

Slovenia advocates the most effective protection of victims and witnesses, as well as of suspects or accused persons, based on the internationally recognised safeguards of fair trial. Since present-day conflicts greatly affect women and children, they must be afforded special protection. This should be appropriately reflected in the Court’s ability to deal effectively with gender-related and sexual crimes, taking into account necessary provisions for victim and witness protection. Since the phenomenon of the use of children as soldiers is sadly on the increase in the conduct of armed conflicts, the statute will also have to address this issue. We hope that states will soon recognize 18 as a minimum acceptable age for recruitment and participation in hostilities.

Effective functioning of the Court would be seriously undermined if states were allowed to submit reservations to the Statute. Taking into account the inter-relatedness and complexity of the different parts of the Statute, reservations to any provision would, in our view, necessarily run counter to the object and purpose of the Statute.

The examples of both ad-hoc Tribunals, for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, demonstrate clearly that close, genuine and effective co-operation of States with the Court is essential to actually succeed in bringing perpetrators of crimes to justice. Slovenia strongly supports such co-operation between the Court and States, both States Parties, as well as States which will not become Parties to the Statute.

A further lesson to be drawn from the functioning of both ad-hoc tribunals is the necessity of securing a sound financial basis for the proper functioning of the Court. Slovenia believes that financing the International Criminal Court from the regular UN budget would be most effective. While providing for stable and regular financing, we do not consider this as a threat to the independence of the Court.

Slovenia is optimistic that such a Court, endowed with the mentioned attributes, is not only desirable but also possible. Slovenia’s delegation is confident that we are all approaching the upcoming long and difficult negotiations with a common shared goal in mind: to create an efficient and widely-accepted court to hold individuals accountable for the most serious and flagrant violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Let me thus conclude, Mr. President, with a strong expression of hope that the ongoing human rights year, 50 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the Genocide Convention ("Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide") will be crowned with the creation of a just, strong and credible International Criminal Court.

Thank you, Mr President.