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Updates on Belgium

31 Dec 2005

Belgium ratified on 28 June 2000, becoming the 13th State Party. An intergovernmental commission on humanitarian law in the Ministry of Justice has created a working group to harmonize Belgium's substantive criminal code with the crimes under the Rome Statute.

On 17 July 2002, a political agreement was reached between the major political parties concerning the Belgian law on universal jurisdiction of 16 June 1993, revised in 1999. This agreement will be followed by a proposal for an interpretative law of the 1993 law, which will allow the pursuit of pending cases and investigations as well by a global modification of the law of 1993 in order to frame the exercise of universal jurisdiction in the future. The agreement confirms the will expressed by the legislature in 1993 that complaints against the presumed perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide are admissible, even if the accused are not on Belgian territory. It further confirms the principle of universal jurisdiction. Nonetheless, it limits the triggering of universal jurisdiction by victims. When the crimes have not been committed on Belgian territory and the plaintiffs are neither Belgian nor resident on Belgian territory for one year or more and the accused is not on Belgian territory, then only the Federal Prosecutor will be competent to initiate proceedings. These conditions are not applicable to crimes committed before the entry into force of the Rome Statute. They also do not apply to crimes committed after 1 July 2002 on the territory of a state not party to the Rome Statute or by the national of a non-party state, or if the Security Council has referred the crimes to the ICC. Also, the proposed law provides for the immunity of state officials to prevent the application of the 1993 law within the limits established by international law. Belgian courts will have the power of interpretation of questions linked to immunities. According to a joint press release on the Belgium universal jurisdiction legislation, from Amnesty International, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, La Ligue Belge des Droits de l,Homme and the Liga voor Mensenrechten, this disposition must be read in the light of Article 27 of the Rome Statute which refers to the non-opposability of criminal immunity for the most serious crimes. The interpretative law and the modification law shall be adopted at the new parliamentary session in October.

On 3 May 2002, the official Belgian newspaper, Le Moniteur, published a call for Belgian candidates for judgeship in the International Criminal Court.

In January 2002, the Council of Ministers examined the draft law on the cooperation between Belgium and the ICC. The advice of the Council of State was then requested on the basis of the emergency procedure. The draft law on cooperation includes one paragraph dedicated to the nomination procedure for judges of the ICC. The vacancy for a seat of judge must be published in the Moniteur (Belgian official paper).