The President of the Assembly of States Parties (“the Assembly”), Ambassador Tiina Intelmann, visited Strasbourg on 23 April 2013. President Intelmann met with members of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), with whom she discussed, inter alia, efforts to achieve universality of the Rome Statute and continued political support of the Parliamentary Assembly and its members to the ICC and the fight against impunity.
The President also participated in a discussion, “The International Criminal Court, the Syria crisis and the Security Council: Turkey’s approach to accountability and the Rule of Law” co-organized by MP Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Vice President of the Turkish Justice and Development Party, and by Parliamentarians for Global Action. In her remarks, the President explained the initiative undertaken by a number of States Parties to ask the United Nations Security Council to refer the situation of Syria to the ICC. She also highlighted the fact that despite the known criticism about the way the Council has been able to follow up its previous referrals of situations to the Court the Council has increasingly been able to acknowledge the contribution of the Court to the fight against impunity and to international peace and security.
On 3 May, President Intelmann visited Washington DC to speak on the topic “Assessing the International Criminal Court’s Impact: The View of Member States” at the Council on Foreign Relations. The President also met with high level officials from the US State Department to address the on-going activities of States Parties related to cooperation and capacity building.