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This special issue of Women's Voices on the Women's Court, focuses an event organised by the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice and held on 1 June 2010, during the International Criminal Court (ICC) 10-year Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. In this issue we provide you with an overview of the Women's Court, highlights from the presentations and testimonies, and a link to a selection of testimonies presented at the Women's Court. In 2011 we will publish the full text of all the testimonies along with related speeches and photos.
In addition to Women's Voices, we also produce a regular legal newsletter, Legal Eye on the ICC, with summaries and gender analysis of legal developments, judicial decisions, announcements of arrest warrants and victims' participation before the Court, particularly as these issues relate to the prosecution of gender-based crimes.
More information about the work of Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice
and previous issues of Women's Voices and the Legal Eye can be found on our website at www.iccwomen.org.
The Women's Court
From 31 May – 11 June, the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice participated in the Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the ICC, in Kampala, Uganda. The Women's Initiatives team, the largest NGO delegation, included 35 women's rights and peace activists from Uganda, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately, the Sudanese activists invited to participate in the delegation and give testimony at the Women's Court had to cancel their participation at the last minute due to serious concerns for their security following threatening statements made by the Government of Sudan in relation to the ICC Review Conference. It was reported that Dr Qutbi Al-Mahdi, ruling National Congress Party official, said that the attendance of opposition parties at the conference in Uganda 'is a provocation to the feelings of the Sudanese and disregard to their self-esteem, dignity and pride in their national sovereignty'.
The day before our partners were due to travel to Kampala, three Sudanese activists in Khartoum were forcibly removed by members of the Sudanese National Security from the plane that was bringing them to Kampala to attend the Review Conference. Testimonies from Sudan were nonetheless included in the Women's Court thanks to the participation of Sudanese women's and human rights activists already on-site in Kampala.
Click here to read more about Women's Initiatives participation in the Review Conference in the July 2010 issue of Women's Voices.
The Women's Court featured presentations from women's rights and peace activists from Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan, who spoke about the impact of these conflicts on women, the targeting of women by armed forces and militia groups for crimes of sexual violence and their work for justice, accountability and peace. Testimonies were given in four sessions, each focusing on a specific conflict and country where the ICC is conducting investigations. The panels were moderated by peace and justice advocates including Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai; Silvana Arbia, Registrar of the ICC; Bukeni Waruzi, Lead Campaign for Gender-based violence at Witness; and Elisabeth Rehn, Chairperson for the Board of Directors for the ICC Trust Fund for Victims.
Judge Sang-Hyun Song, President of the International Criminal Court, also attended the event and delivered some remarks recognising the important and effective contributions that women's advocates made towards including gender provisions in the Rome Statute and affirming that 'the Court and the ASP must continue to build on and live up to the legacy [women] have created' and to 'take care to listen to the voices and concerns of women and of organisations like the Women's Initiatives'.
The Women's Court followed in the footsteps of the 1993 Vienna Tribunal on Women's Human Rights and the 2000 Tokyo Women's Tribunal. These tribunals, with their compelling testimony by women victims/survivors of armed conflict, helped pave the way for international tribunals to prosecute gender-based crimes as international crimes. Like its predecessors, the aim of the Women's Court was to draw attention to the harms that women and girls experience during armed conflict and the fact that crimes against women continue to be under-investigated and prosecuted. Rather than making a determination of guilt or delivering a formal 'judgment', the purpose of the Women's Court was to ensure that the voices and experiences of victims/survivors — and especially women — assumed an appropriately central role at the Review Conference.
Timed to precede the Assembly of States Parties' stocktaking process scheduled for the first week of the Review Conference, the Women's Court provided a forum for victims/survivors and women's rights advocates to express their views on the four stocktaking themes (the impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities, peace and justice, complementarity and cooperation). The presenters shared their views about the impact of armed conflict on women, their desire for accountability for perpetrators of gender-based crimes, their hope in the ICC to deliver on its promise of justice, and the specific challenges they face in their work for peace, justice and reconciliation. While affirming the importance of the ICC as a mechanism for accountability, they also expressed frustration over the delay in trials, the failure of governments to execute arrests and cooperate in other ways with the Court, and lack of information about the Court's role in bringing justice and peace.
Scroll down http://www.iccwomen.org/news/docs/Women'sVoices%208-10/Women'sVoices%208-10/WomVoices8-10.html and you can read excerpts from the presentations. An informal translation of French excerpts is provided in the footnotes. You can read the Advance Collection of Women's Testimonies from the Women's Court by clicking here or on the names of the presenters whose testimony is included in the Advance Collection.