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Informal Daily Summary from the ASP: Tuesday, 7 December 2010

07 Dec 2010

Dear all,

The ninth session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) continued today in New York, USA.

This message includes a short summary of developments in the ASP plenary session (I), side events (II), related documents (III) as well as related news coverage (IV).

>From 6 - 10 December 2010, representatives from each of the 114 ICC member states are gathering to address and make decisions on numerous issues that are central to the Court's operations.

The ASP is a pivotal event for the Coalition for the ICC, which has participated in ASP sessions for well over a decade. More than 150 NGO representatives are attending the ninth ASP to monitor key issues at stake, including the necessary follow-up to the June 2010 ICC Review Conference, the ICC budget, cooperation with the ICC, oversight mechanisms and the upcoming judicial and prosecutorial elections, among other issues. NGOs will contribute to discussions through side events, advocacy meetings, press conferences and the submission of position papers from the Coalition's issue-based teams.

The various papers produced by Coalition teams as well as individual members' recommendations to the ASP are available on the Coalition's website at: http://coalitionfortheicc.org/?mod=asp9

Official ASP documents and journals can be found on the ICC-ASP website at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/exeres/f16c9b3e-55a6-4989-8987-f57125a0d306.htm

Pictures of the event are posted on the Coalition's Flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coalitionforicc/

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you need further information.

Regards,

CICC Secretariat
www.coalitionfortheicc.org

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CICC ASP9 INFORMAL SUMMARY: TUESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2010

I. PLENARY SESSION

The second day of the ninth session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) opened with discussions on the budget which included formal presentations from the Registrar of the Court, highlighting the Court’s budgetary needs and its principle concerns.  This was followed by a presentation by the Committee on Budget and Finance on its report from its 15th session in August and its recommendations on the budget.  The plenary session concluded with consideration of the audit reports.

The Report of the Committee on Budget and Finance on the work of its fifteenth session can be found at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP9/ICC-ASP-9-15-ENG.pdf

Today’s plenary session also concluded the General Debate, with speeches from 12 States Parties including: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (on behalf of the African states parties), the United Kingdom, Estonia, Slovenia, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Ecuador, Nigeria, Lesotho, Burkina Faso and Ghana.  Three non-states parties also spoke, including the United States of America, Guatemala and Kuwait.

Issues raised included, among others, the outcomes of the ICC Review Conference, cooperation with the ICC, political support to the Court, universality, complementarity, the Court’s budget for 2011, victims, ICC communications, 2011 elections, and the recognition for the role of the Coalition for the ICC and civil society. States Parties also welcomed the States that have recently ratified the Rome Statute: Bangladesh, Seychelles, Saint Lucia and Moldova.

These statements will be posted shortly on the ICC-ASP website at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/nr/exeres/f16c9b3e-55a6-4989-8987-f57125a0d306.htm

In the afternoon, the plenary proceeded with the Working Group on the Budget, where the Team Leader of the Coalition’s Budget and Finance Team, Jonathan O'Donohue of Amnesty International, was invited to give a brief presentation, the Working Group on Amendments where States discussed the structure of future discussions on amendments, and informal consultations on the omnibus resolution.

To read the paper of the Coalition’s Budget Team, see;  http://www.iccnow.org/documents/CICC_Budget_and_Finance_Team_Paper__30Nov2010.pdf

II. SIDE EVENTS

The Coalition held a press briefing featuring panelists William R. Pace, the Coalition’s Convenor; Richard Dicker, Director of the Human Rights Watch International Justice Program, and Stella Ndirangu, Legal Officer at the International Commission of Jurists – Kenya.  Panelists addressed key issues at stake before the ASP, issues of cooperation, support to the ICC and complementarity before the ICC, and the role civil society has been able to play in Kenya.

The Coalition’s press briefing can be viewed on UNTV at: http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/2010/12/press-conference-coalition-for-the-international-criminal-court.html

The DPI report on this briefing is available here: http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs//2010/101207_ICC.doc.htm

ASP President Christian Wenaweser, ICC President Judge Sang-Hyun Song and ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo held a joint press conference on the work of the ASP.

This press briefing can be viewed on UNTV at: http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/2010/12/press-conference-the-9th-session-of-the-assembly-of-states-parties-to-the-rome-statute-of-the-international-criminal-court.html

The Coalition for the ICC and Parliamentarians for Global Action co-hosted an event on “Cooperation with the International Criminal Court”.  Panelists spoke about the obligation of states parties under the Rome Statute to cooperate with the ICC, obstacles to cooperation, strategies to generate effective cooperation through political support and execution of arrest warrants, and the ASP’s mandate to promote cooperation.  Speakers included William Pace, Coalition for the ICC; Amady Ba, Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC; Musa Sirma, MP, PGA Kenya National Group; Senator Mwamba Mushikonke Mwamus, PGA DRC National Group; Jørgen Poulsen, MP, Foreign Affairs Committee (Denmark); Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch; and Stella Ndirangu, ICJ Kenya.

To read the paper of the Coalition's Cooperation team, visit: http://www.iccnow.org/documents/CICC_Cooperation_Team_Paper.pdf

No Peace without Justice hosted a meeting of the Justice Rapid Response Policy Group, a multilateral stand-by facility to rapidly deploy criminal justice and related professionals.  At the meeting, the group reported on recent developments in the Justice Rapid Response mechanism.

To read more on the JRR, visit: http://www.justicerapidresponse.org/

The ICC Public Information and Documents Section hosted a discussion entitled “Making Justice Meaningful”. This event featured an introduction by ICC Registrar Silvana Arbia, a screening of a video report of outreach activities and a questions and answer session with Claudia Perdomo, ICC interim Head of the information and documentation section; Jelena Vukasinovic, ICC Associate Legal Outreach Officer; Maria Mabinty Kamara, ICC Field Outreach Co-ordinator (Uganda); Daphne Anayiotos, ICC Field Outreach Coordinator (DRC); Fabienne Chassagneux, ICC Field Public Information and Outreach Coordinator (CAR).

The Court’s 2010 outreach report should be made available shortly at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Structure+of+the+Court/Outreach/Outreach+Reports/

The Report of the Court on the Public Information Strategy for 2011-2013
(ICC-ASP/9/29) is available at: http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP9/ICC-ASP-9-29-ENG.pdf

To read more on ICC Outreach and communications, visit http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=communications and http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Structure+of+the+Court/Outreach/

The Permanent Mission of Trinidad and Tobago and the Permanent Mission of Slovakia (in its capacity of Facilitator for the Plan of Action on Universality and Full Implementation of the Rome statute) organized a working lunch with Caribbean states on ratification and full implementation of the ICC Rome Statute. Panelists included representatives from the ASP, the Commonwealth secretariat, the ICRC, PGA and the CICC. Participants addressed some of the challenges and progresses with regard to ratification and implementation in the Caribbean region and discussed available resources to move forward on implementation processes, including model ICC implementing legislations from the Commonwealth, the OAS and the ICRC.

For more information on ICC and the Caribbean, see: http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=subregion&idusubreg=22

III. RELATED DOCUMENTS

1. All Coalition Team Papers and individual members’ recommendations can be found here: http://coalitionfortheicc.org/?mod=asp9&idudctp=21&show=all#21

2. “9th Assembly of State Parties to the ICC: NPWJ calls for a stronger international criminal justice system, through follow-up to the stocktaking, outreach and an intensified ICC field presence”, No Peace Without Justice, 6 December 2010, http://www.npwj.org/ICC/9th-Assembly-State-Parties-ICC-NPWJ-calls-a-stronger-international-criminal-justice-system-throu

IV. NEWS COVERAGE

1.      “Prosecutor warns Ivory Coast against war crimes”, by Edith Lederer, AP/MSNBC, 6 December 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40539591/ns/world_news-africa/

2.      “Ban tells ICC to ‘stay in the offence’”, by Thijs Bouwknegt, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 7 December 2010, http://www.rnw.nl/international-justice/article/ban-tells-icc-stay-offence