<< Front page News March 12, 2004

Speakers advocate international criminal court

Marjorie and Floyd Ramp gave a lecture on Monday at the Oberlin Public Library concerning the International Criminal Court. Both were NGO delegates to the 1992 World Summit and are active participants in Citizens for Global Solutions. The talk was sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Citizens for Global Solutions and the American Association of University Women.

The purpose of the International Criminal Court, founded July 1, 2002, is to bring perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice and to deter such crimes in the future.

Because the court is concerned with trying individuals rather than nations, it operates separately from the International Court of Justice and the United Nations.

Plans for the court began when an ad hoc committee met between 1995 and 1996 to begin drafting the Rome Statute. President Bill Clinton attended these meetings, but was reluctant to sign due to lack of support from the Senate. He signed the Statute in the last hours of his presidency in 2002; however, in an unprecedented move, President George W. Bush “unsigned” the treaty, making United States participation in the Court impossible.

“The irony of this is that the Rome Statute reflects all of America’s judicial laws, except trial by jury, which is impossible in an international context,” Marjorie Ramp said.

The United States stands with a handful of rogue nations who have not signed the Statute, including Libya, Iran and Somalia. Ninety-two nations have ratified the Rome Statute. In a speech addressed to Georgetown University, Cherie Booth, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, protested the lack of U.S. involvement in the International Criminal Court.

“It seems inconceivable that a state committed to the rule of law such as the United States would refuse to investigate and prosecute its nationals should there be reliable evidence that they had been involved in international crimes,” she said.

Several surveys conducted by the University of Maryland have determined that the general public of the United States is in favor of the U.S. becoming a member state of the International Criminal Court. However, most senators, including Ohio Senators Mike DeWine (R) and George Voinovich (R), are opposed to signing the Rome Statute. Floyd Ramp explained that citizen action is needed in order to drive government approval of signing the Rome Statute.

“When Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, he still sent the armed forces to remove Native Americans from their land,” Floyd Ramp said. “But when Nixon was ordered to hand over the tapes during the Watergate Scandal, he was driven to heed the Supreme Court’s order because of the people’s outrage.”

U.S. Senators’ main objection to signing the Rome Statute is the fear of having citizens unfairly put on trial by a politically motivated, rogue prosecutor. However, anyone put on trial by the court benefits from the same rights one would receive in a U.S. trial, and the prosecutor has limited power.

The Court, which cannot try crimes that occurred before the year 2002, contains 18 judges elected by member nations, a prosecutor, a president, vice president, second vice president, an Appeals Court, a Trial Court, a Pre-trial Court, a Victim’s Trust Fund and a Victim and Witness Support Division.

Cases heard by the Court are submitted by state parties or the prosecutor. However, the prosecutor also needs the consent of three judges to bring the case to court, and a judge who disagrees with the prosecutor can appeal to a larger pool of judges. Thus, the prosecutor’s power is very restricted. The current prosecutor, Louis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, was unanimously elected by member states.

Marjorie Ramp said that U.S. international policy has always shown a propensity to think that it is not subject to international law. For instance, the U.S. rejected its membership to the League of Nations, and upon joining the United Nations created the Connelly Amendment, which reserves the right of the U.S. to resist U.N. intervention in any domestic matter and the right of the U.S. to determine what is considered a domestic matter.

Very little has been published in the United States about the International Criminal Court.

“The vast majority of [Americans] have no concept of what the International Criminal Court is doing,” Floyd Ramp said. “We can’t say that it will always work, but the stronger it becomes, the more effective it will be in saving people’s lives.”


 
 
   

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