International criminal court statute comes into force. (Breaking News).

"Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people." So reads the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which two years ago was reprinted in booklet form as a children's "Human Rights Passport" and whose spirit and content informs the May Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on children's issues--issues vital to "the succeeding generations" of which the United Nations Charter itself speaks. And on 11 April, just weeks before the session was to begin, a critical international treaty designed to prevent or penalize the essential criminality of such "barbarous acts" came into force.

The historic occasion of the deposit of the necessary sixty ratifications relating to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was marked by a treaty event in a solemn setting at United Nations Headquarters. As we go to press, 66 countries have deposited their instruments of ratification and 139 have signed it. The treaty was to enter into force on the first day of the month after the sixtieth day following the date of the deposit of the sixtieth instrument of ratification. Accordingly, the Statute's entry into force is 1 July 2002, and the first meeting of the parties to the Statute will take place in September 2002. The ICC is expected to be established in 2003.

The Court will possess the jurisdiction to deal with crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, crime of aggression and crimes against humanity. It is hoped that the ICC will help to end the impunity with which individuals violate the established norms against these crimes, remedy the deficiencies of ad hoc tribunals, and provide the legal forum when national criminal justice institutions are unwilling--or, for that matter, unable to act.

Located in The Hague, the Netherlands, the Court will consist of 18 internationally respected judges elected for a nine-year term, and a team of prosecutors and investigators. It will not be part of the United Nations and will be accountable to the countries that ratify the Statute. These countries agree to prosecute individuals accused of such crimes under their own laws, or to surrender them to the Court for trial.

The ICC Statute, drafted by a committee established by the General Assembly with more than 100 countries participating, was adopted by 120 countries at the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, held in Rome in 1998.

The establishment of such a court had been on the United Nations agenda since 1948, but the appalling massacres in Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda made the need for it even more urgent. In fact, on 9 December 1948--the very day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted--the General Assembly voted to approve the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was characterized as a crime under international law. Article VI of the Convention provides that persons charged with genocide "shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction". The International Criminal Court is intended, in Secretary-General Annan's phrase, to "ensure that no ruler, no State, no junta and no army anywhere can abuse human rights with impunity. Only then will the innocence of distant wars and conflicts know that they too may sleep under the cover of justice; that t hey, too, have rights, and those who violate those rights will be punished."