First of all, Mr. Chairman, allow me to congratulate you on your election to preside over this Conference. Your experience and your knowledge on international relations are a guarantee of the successful conduct of the work of the Conference on the establishment of an International Criminal Court.

The Order of Malta, which I have the honour to represent, is the oldest institution in the world established for the purpose of caring for the sick and needy, that is to say engaged in humanitarian assistance.

At the present time, its hospital activities are devoted to humanitarian assistance to people in need as a result of illness, war, forced expatriation and natural disaster with no discrimination on grounds of race, nationality or religion.

These activities are carried out through the various agencies of the Sovereign Order and by its specific multinational organizations, among which I must mention AIOM (international Action of the Order of Malta), ECOM (Emergency Corps of the Order of Malta for assistance in cases of disasters), CIOMAL (the International Committee of the Order of Malta for Leprosy Relief) HOLAFOM for activities in the Holy Land, and the Coordination Centre for the Americas.

The Sovereign Order of Malta is present through its members in 40 countries and has diplomatic relations with 80 States, a fact that facilitates the effectiveness of its hospitaller activities. It is providing assistance in 100 countries. It has some 11.000 members and some 70.000 full time volunteers. Collaborators in various ways number more than a million, providing assistance to approximately 10 million people.

If, on the one hand, it is true that a court needs laws and their consequent breaking in order to apply sanctions, it is equally true that crimes against mankind will be prevented only when there are concrete examples of judgements passed by a court applying the laws wanted by the International Community.

Humanitarian assistance and relief action having been the backbone of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta activities during nine centuries, we cannot remain indifferent to the proposed constitution of a new legal body aimed at preventing and punishing international criminal activities, consequence or not of armed conflicts.

Its reality must be of capital importance for all those devoted to the benefit of mankind.

The competence of the Court, embracing genocide, war crimes, protection of human life and liberties, its composition and financing, the connection between its own competence and national sovereignty as well as many others items must be the object of very careful consideration in order to obtain an independent, functional, effective and credible Permanent International Criminal Court.