Press Release ·Communiqué de presse
(Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document)

The Hague, 11 June 1999
PR/ P.I.S/ 408-e

STATEMENT BY JUSTICE LOUISE ARBOUR
FOLLOWING HER APPOINTMENT TO THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA

Yesterday, the Justice Minister of Canada announced my appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, effective 15 September 1999.

I have therefore informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations of my intention to resign my post as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) effective on a date to be agreed upon prior to September 15, in order to take up my duties as a member of the Court. I look forward to joining a Court for which I have immense respect and admiration. I am also grateful that I have been given enough time to complete some important on-going projects in the two Tribunals, and I will do everything in my power to ensure an easy transition to a new leadership in the Prosecutor’s Office.

I will by then have served three years of my four-year term of office as Prosecutor. The decision to accept this appointment has been a very difficult one for me to make. It has been made easier, however, by the confidence that I have that the two Tribunals are now successful mature institutions, and that they are considerably greater than the sum of their parts.

The Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretariat of the United Nations have shown unfailing support for the two Tribunals, and have therefore allowed them to become what they were conceived to be, independent judicial institutions and genuine instruments of peace with justice. I believe that we can look to the future of international criminal justice with confidence.