The President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, participated in the first regional conference on the International Criminal Court, held on 24 and 25 May 2011 in Doha, which was sponsored by the League of Arab States and the State of Qatar.
During the conference, President Wenaweser participated in a panel on the crimes falling under the Court’s jurisdiction and delivered a keynote address on the outcome of the 2010 Review Conference, held in Uganda, and in particular on the adoption by consensus of the amendment on the crime of aggression, a historic achievement on a topic which had been of particular interest to many countries in the Arab world.
During his presentations, which included a 24 May interview with Al Jazeera TV, President Wenaweser highlighted the importance of holding the conference in Doha during the period of dynamic changes in the region and when the role of the ICC as a key actor in the field of international criminal justice had been consolidated. He noted that the ICC was active in many regions of the world via preliminary examinations, while the Court’s judicial proceedings were taking place with regard to countries that had specifically requested the ICC to investigate or which the United Nations Security Council had referred to the ICC under Chapter VII of the UN Charter; this was the case of the situation in Darfur and in Libya.
Furthermore, President Wenaweser also stressed that the Court was having an important deterrent effect by sending a clear message that there would be no impunity for perpetrators of the heinous crimes falling under the ICC’s jurisdiction. He recalled the valuable contribution of the countries in the region in the negotiation process that led to the establishment of the Court and expressed the hope that more States from the region would join the Rome Statute in the near future.
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| President Wenaweser met with MP Ghassan Moukheiber, Lebanese representative of the Parliamentarians for Global Action |
President Wenaweser also held meetings with the representatives of the League of Arab States, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia. He also addressed a group of NGOs on the topic “Civil Society and the Assembly”, and expressed his appreciation for the support of civil society in the region to the ICC.