Mr. President, distinguished delegates,

One night in September 1992, a group of Bosnian Serbs took a group of women and their children from the Partizan Sports Hall in the town of Foca to a near by apartment building One victim reported, I was raped by two of them. They said that they would throw my child out of the window. I cried and screamed. The victim's four year old daughter was also taken with her; she was able to watch through an open door as her mother was stripped, searched for valuables, and as a pistol was put to her head. The victim reported that she was then raped by four men. Such abuses against women have been widespread in the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Can the victims sleep at night when they know that those responsible for their suffering remain at large? To combat rape as a weapon of war and crimes against humanity we demand a permanent international criminal court.

Had a tribunal been in existence before the start of the conflict, then maybe these men would have thought twice before engaging in these criminal acts. On behalf of all similar victims Amnesty International wants a court that meets 16 fundamental criteria. Among these criteria I want to highlight just two. Colleagues from other non-governmental organizations will address some of the others.

First, if the permanent international criminal court is to be an effective complement to national courts, then it must be able to exercise the same universal jurisdiction over genocide, other crimes against humanity and war crimes as each of the state parties to the statute have under international law.

Under contemporary international law, each of these core crimes are crimes of universal jurisdiction. This means that any state may, and in some cases must, permit its courts to exercise jurisdiction over a person suspected of having committing one of these crimes and bring anyone responsible for such crimes to justice, no matter where the crime was committed.
It may do so without the consent of the state with custody, the state where the crime occurred, the state of the victim's nationality, the state of the suspect's nationality or any other state.

Therefore, there is no legal reason why the permanent international criminal court -- which is likely to receive the consent of a large number of states -- should not have the same power to investigate and prosecute. those responsible for crimes of concern to the entire international community as any single one of its states parties.

Second, if the court is to be effective, its judgements must be accepted by all sectors of the international community as scrupulously fair and impartial. Therefore, the statute and the rules of procedure and evidence must ensure that suspects and accused have the right to a fair trial in accordance with the highest international standards at all stages of the proceedings.

Amnesty International, which has more than one million members and supporters around the world, agrees with Louise Arbour, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, that if the court is a weak and powerless institution, not only will it lack legitimacy, but it will betray the very human rights  ideals that will have inspired its creation.

We, too believe that such a court would be a retrograde development and that such a court would be worse than no court at all.

We are confident that this conference Will create a court that we can support rather than oppose.

Thank you for your attention.