It is an honour to address, on behalf of UNICEF, the Diplomatic Conference for the establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC). The adoption of such a Statute by this Conference is the expression of an unequivocal message from the international community that heinous violations of human rights cannot go unpunished and impunity cannot prevail. An effective and fair International Criminal Court is required to ensure this objective.

But the concerns of UNICEF for the mandate of the ICC go beyond the general, to a very real and pressing concern that the rights of children and women - as victims, as witnesses, and as manipulated and abused participants, are all recognised and appropriately handled by this legal mechanism.

For UNICEF, the mandate of the ICC is also an opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental value of the rights of children and women -- particularly when they are used and abused as a means to terrorize societies and achieve military victories.

For many children in conflict situations, the war has shaped their lives, their emotions, their attitudes and their future more than any other single circumstance. Vulnerable and defenseless, they have lived with hunger, anxiety, insecurity, military domination and an acute sense of powerlessness for most of their young lives. Many have been separated from their parents and forced to survive surrounded by destruction in besieged towns, razed villages and looted countryside, with state-run health, education and welfare programmes utterly non existent, leaving them without the basic necessities for their survival and with little or no protection. In this setting, the vulnerable groups in the communities, mainly the children and women, are marginalised, deliberately ignored, brutalized and subjected to every kind of human rights abuse.

Children and women are now, overwhelmingly, the primary targets in conflicts. Can the international community possibly remain indifferent? Constituting, in many cases, more than half of those killed, children are the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international law. Children are not simply caught in the crossfire nor are they accidental victims; they are the deliberate targets of an orchestrated campaign to terrorize and subjugate entire communities.

In many of today's battles, children are being abducted or forcefully recruited from homes, schools and communities to be trained as fighters or forced into slave labour. Not only are they the victims of horrendous crimes, children are increasingly 'objects' in the hands of adults who manipulate them to commit atrocities. Frequently tortured, threatened and sexually abused, children fear escape because of the likelihood of the brutal revenge being visited on the families and communities of the escapees. Can the international community possibly remain indifferent? There is also growing evidence that sexual abuse and gender-based violence have become an intrinsic part of armed conflict strategy. Women and girls are commonly the targets and victims of egregious crimes and have frequently been denied access to justice--- at both national and international levels. The conflicts in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia are only a recent illustration of the horrifying levels of violence against women and girls, including acts of rape, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and other forms of sexual assault. In UNICEF's view, children need to be protected against all forms of violence and any violation of their fundamental rights in times of peace and in times of war. An important way to achieve this is to ensure that the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 191 countries, be considered as a guiding reference for the work of  tile ICC.

Thus, guided by the Convention, UNICEF believes that the International Criminal Court must be unequivocal in its jurisdiction over the areas with a particular relevance for children: 1) The recruitment of children under 18 years of age into armed forces or groups, or their participation in hostilities, either direct or indirect, should be considered a war crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

2) The Statute must acknowledge the special vulnerability of children below 18 years of age to violence reflected in the increasing number of cases of their inducement or coercion into prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation. There is an urgent need to ensure that where the children are victims, the ICC considers those acts as war crimes and applies even stronger sanctions against those who are responsible.

3) The ICC should have no jurisdiction over persons below 18. The ICC, in applying its punitive power,
would not, in any event, provide the rehabilitative emphasis which juvenile justice requires. Moreover, it is important to recognise that the commission of serious crimes by children is often the result of indoctrination and manipulation by adults. In those cases,* accountability must rest with those responsible for giving orders to children, and not with the victimized children.

4) UNICEF also believes that the death penalty, life imprisonment or long periods of deprivation of liberty must not be applicable to children below the age of 18 years. However, the Statute should promote measures for rehabilitation and psycho-social recovery of child victims, whatever their age, in light of the application of the CRC.

5) UNICEF further believes that schools, churches and hospitals should never constitute military targets. And the laying of anti-personnel landmines should be considered a war crime by the ICC.

In UNICEF's view, the Statute must reflect the reality which pervades the lives of many vulnerable civilians in conflict situations. It must play a major role as both deterrent and enforcer. It must be clear in its responsibilities to children and women as victims and as witnesses. What is more, the ICC should have jurisdiction over attacks against humanitarian personnel when working in situations of potential violations of human rights.

The establishment of the ICC should signal a reaffirmation that the commitment made 50 years ago to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its emphasis on the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, is still very much alive.

Thank you.