Parliamentarians for Global Action

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) established by the Rome Statute, adopted on 17 July 1998, is the first permanent Court in the history of humankind that will exercise a ‘general’ jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. The effective operations of the ICC will start when 60 States ratify the Rome Statute; as of 29 October 2001, 43 States have ratified, leading to speculations that the ICC will enter into effect sometime in 2002. (See PGA Document “Current Status of Signature and Ratification.”)

The ICC promises to be an effective international mechanism that will break the impunity that has sadly characterized crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes over the last decades. With this aim in mind, Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) has mobilised its international network of legislators to generate and increase parliamentary, as well as public support, towards the early entry into force of the ICC Statute.

Indeed, PGA has been involved in the creation of the Court from the very beginning; in 1989, the Programme Convenor of International Law and Human Rights, the Hon. A.N.R. Robinson, member of PGA and then Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, presented a resolution at the 44th General Assembly, requesting the establishment of the first permanent international criminal court and initiated the ICC process.

In the subsequent years, PGA’s network has remained active and has contributed significantly to the ratifications attained so far. PGA has organized comprehensive regional conferences on the ICC, among others, in Arusha, Buenos Aires, Lisbon and Windhoek, conferences that yielded strong committal Plans of Actions respectively for the East Africa, MERCOSUR (Latin America), Lusophone (Portuguese speaking), and SADC countries. PGA has also conducted national parliamentary briefings on the ICC, as well as coordinated a “Pilot Project” in Namibia, a research project in which a PGA sponsored legal researcher investigated the incorporation of the Rome Statute into the Namibian legal order. Political leaders from many countries belonging to the PGA network presented parliamentary motions on ICC ratification and proposed ICC-related legislation.