19 April 2016 marked the Official Opening of the ICC Permanent Premises hosted by the ICC President, Judge Silvia Fernández, and H.E. Mr Sidiki Kaba, President of the Assembly of States Parties.

H.E. Mr Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, also spoke at the event saying, “I fully support this court and its objectives”

Since its inception, PGA has been a staunch supporter of the ICC. At the UNGA session of 1989, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, former PGA Board Member and newly appointed Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr. Arthur N.R. Robinson, MP, seized the opportunity of an agenda-item on combating international drugs-trafficking to introduce a resolution for a permanent international criminal jurisdiction, to be transmitted to the International Law Commission (ILC), bearing in mind that the ILC could have unified this agenda-item with the one relating to the draft Code on Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind. This meant that, since the UNGA of 1990, the ICC project effectively re-started with the view of fighting impunity for the most serious international crimes.

The negotiation and adoption of the Rome Statute (1995-98) and its entry into force (2002) brought about a fully functioning Court that is operating on 9 situations worldwide (DRC, CAR, Uganda, Mali, CdI, Darfur/Sudan, Kenya, Libya and Georgia), while the Prosecutor is conducting a number of extremely important preliminary examinations (e.g. Afghanistan, Colombia, Guinea and Nigeria).

Yet, only at the end of 2015, was the ICC able to move into its permanent premises in The Hague, which were officially inaugurated today. PGA Board Member and International Law and Human Rights Program Convenor, Ms. Barbara Lochbihler, MEP, (Germany; Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights) led a small PGA Delegation in attendance:

The global network of PGA was present today at, and warmly welcomes, the inauguration of the permanent premises of the one and only permanent jurisdiction aimed at ending impunity for the most serious crimes that shock the conscience of human-kind: the ICC. We are proud that a Member of PGA was the proponent and initiator of the UN General Assembly Resolution that, back in 1989, re-started the formation process of the ICC, which should have been created after the UN to honour the Nuremberg trials legacy.

PGA welcomes the Statements issued by Informal Ministerial Network for the ICC, coordinated by Liechtenstein, the CICC, and by the Court itself.