The Hague - At a reception on occasion of the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims on 20 March 2013, the newly elected Chair Mr Motoo Noguchi announced that the Planethood Foundation donated $ 50,000 in support of the Trust Fund’s activities to the benefit of victims of crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The Planethood Foundation is an initiative of former Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz and his son Donald, who attended the ceremony.
Mr Motoo Noguchi acknowledged the donation as being the first major private contribution to the Trust Fund: “We prize this initiative by the Planethood Foundation, of which the founders have for decades been highly visible at the forefront in the fight against impunity of perpetrators of the most serious crimes. This donation shows that this fight should go together with the need to recognise the plight of the victims of those crimes. It gives a strong boost to the Trust Fund’s ability to engage with victims within the Rome Statute’s reparative justice framework.”
On behalf of the Planethood Foundation, Don Ferencz stated that the contribution to the Trust Fund has been made not only on behalf of existing victims, but also to help raise awareness of the need to deter those whose criminal acts give rise to such victims. “This contribution is intended as part of the global message to would-be perpetrators that, though we live in an age of crimes against humanity, it is also an age of humanity against crimes – and one in which the world of impunity is shrinking."
The Planethood Foundation was established in 1996 by Benjamin and Donald Ferencz. Their goal is to help educate toward replacing the law of force with the force of law. As Benjamin Ferencz puts it: “Law. Not war.”
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