{"id":10710,"date":"2019-07-25T15:37:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T13:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=10710"},"modified":"2019-07-25T15:37:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T13:37:48","slug":"standing-with-victims-on-international-justice-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2019\/07\/standing-with-victims-on-international-justice-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing with Victims on International Justice Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Human Rights Watch<\/a> – Twenty-one years ago today, 120 countries adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), creating a permanent international court to hold perpetrators of the world\u2019s gravest crimes to account. The anniversary is a moment to reflect on the successes and challenges of bringing justice to victims over the past year.<\/p>\n

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With armed conflicts raging across the globe and devastating civilian populations, demand for accountability is growing. In Liberia, citizens and civil society groups are calling on President\u00a0George Weah to support the creation of a war crimes court<\/a>\u00a0to provide justice for atrocities committed during the country\u2019s two civil wars.<\/p>\n

In the Central African Republic, the Special Criminal Court has\u00a0finally opened investigations<\/a>\u00a0into abuses committed during the years-long conflict there. Several prosecutors in Europe are\u00a0investigating and bringing to trial<\/a>\u00a0atrocity crimes cases committed in countries such as Syria and Iraq, where the ICC has no jurisdiction. Some governments are also attempting to fill this gap by creating teams of independent investigators to examine crimes in\u00a0Syria<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Myanmar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the ICC, two suspects of grave crimes in the Central African Republic,\u00a0Patrice Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Y\u00e9katom,<\/a>\u00a0were arrested and transferred to the court. Earlier this month, the ICC prosecutor filed a request to\u00a0open an investigation into certain crimes against ethnic Rohingya<\/a>\u00a0arising from government atrocities in Myanmar. Last week,\u00a0ICC judges convicted Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda<\/a>\u00a0for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and began hearings for the confirmation of charges in the\u00a0case against Al Hassan<\/a>\u00a0for crimes in northern Mali.<\/p>\n

But there have also been serious setbacks for victims awaiting justice from the court. In January,\u00a0ICC judges dismissed<\/a>\u00a0the case against\u00a0former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo<\/a>\u00a0and the written reasons for the\u00a0oral decision<\/a>\u00a0were only filed on July 16. In April,\u00a0judges rejected<\/a>\u00a0the prosecutor\u2019s request to open an investigation in Afghanistan on a\u00a0problematic legal basis<\/a>. In the face of evident shortcomings, the court needs to step up its performance.<\/p>\n

The ICC is also facing unprecedented\u00a0threats from the United States<\/a>. In March, the Trump administration threatened visa bans on ICC staff if the court began investigating US nationals for alleged crimes in Afghanistan, and then proceeded to\u00a0revoke the prosecutor\u2019s visa<\/a>\u00a0in April.<\/p>\n

While challenges to securing accountability around the world persist, 21 years after the completion of the Rome Statute, the victims\u2019 need for justice and an effective court are greater than ever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Human Rights Watch – Twenty-one years ago today, 120 countries adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), creating a permanent international court to hold perpetrators of the world\u2019s gravest crimes to account. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,85,43,11,88,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor-selection","category-human-rights","category-human-rights-online-library","category-issues","category-slider","category-world","country-world","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10712,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions\/10712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}