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WOMEN ON THE COURT
NOW!
CAMPAIGN COMMUNIQUE NO. 3
NOMINATION PROCESS CLOSES; 10 WOMEN
NOMINATED
ELECTIONS WILL BE HELD 3-7 FEBRUARY
2003
The nomination period for the election
of judges to the International Criminal Court officially closed on Saturday,
November 30, 2002. In the final count, 10 women were nominated out of 45
candidates in total. (On Friday, 13 December 2002, the government of Paraguay
withdrew the nomination of its candidate. Now, there are 44 official
candidates.) While women make up less than a fourth of the entire pool of
candidates, there is still an opportunity to get a gender balance on the
18-member Court.
The women candidates include:
Maureen Harding Clark (Ireland)
Fatoumata Dembele Dairra (Mali)
Hajnalka Karpati (Hungary)
Akua Kuenyehia (Ghana)
Elizabeth Odio Benito (Costa Rica)
Barbara Ott (Switzerland)
Navanethem Pillay (South Africa)
Sylvia H. Steiner (Brazil)
Anita Usacka (Latvia)
Eleanora Zielinska (Poland)
(Please see below for a listing of all
candidates)
The ICC elections will be subject to
minimum voting requirements for gender, region and field of expertise. This is
the first time that elections to an international judicial institution are
subject to such requirements. (The relevant criteria from the Rome Statute and
additional rules governing the nomination and election process are posted on
our website.)
As a result of the number of nominations
of female candidates, delegates voting in February must apply the maximum
voting requirement for gender – meaning they must vote for at least six women
and at least six men. Had there been fewer than nine female candidates, the
voting requirement would have been reduced. While the voting requirement does
not amount to a quota of women on the Court, it will greatly help counter the
tendency to disregard the Statute’s mandates of “fair representation” of women
and men.
Thus, when voting for the judges,
delegates are required to vote as follows:
Expertise:
-At least 9 candidates from List A
(those having criminal law experience)
-At least 5 candidates from List B (those having international law experience)
Region:
-At least 3 candidates from the Western
Europe and Others Group (WEOG)
-At least 3 candidates from Africa
-At least 3 candidates from the Latin American and Caribbean region (GRULAC)
-At least 2 candidates from Asia
-At least 2 candidates from Eastern Europe
Gender:
-At least 6 women and at least six men
All of the candidates are posted on the
Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice website: (http://www.iccwomen.org/Elections/ELECTIONSindex.htm
) with links to their cv’s and other background information on the UN’s
website.
The Women’s Caucus and other NGO’s will
be researching and compiling information about the candidates to distribute to
the States Parties who will be voting in February. In particular, we are
attempting to gather key articles or judgments the candidates have written and
analyze them to see how or whether they have dealt with issues of sexual and
gender violence and women’s human rights.
We will be in touch with many of you
directly in an effort to get a clearer picture of the candidates’ conduct and
position in national-level legal and political arenas as well as their
commitment to women’s human rights at that level.
At the outset, though, we seek your
assistance in compiling this information to arrive at as full and fair an
assessment as possible. IN PARTICULAR, WE URGE YOU TO DO THE FOLLOWING:
Check the Women’s Caucus website
for the listing of candidates and provide any information you think is
important about any of the candidates – positive or negative;
If you find candidates you feel are
unsuitable for the post, please tell us why and provide as much documentation
as possible;
If you find candidates you would
like to support, let us know and also send letters of support to your
country’s UN Mission and your Foreign Minister and urge them to vote for those
candidates who have a demonstrated commitment to gender justice;
If your government has put forward
a candidate, check to ensure that it did so in accordance with the provisions
set out in the Rome Statute for the nomination of candidates (in the same
process as that for nomination to highest judicial office or to the
International Court of Justice). If you find that the government did not
follow this process, call this to the attention of the Women’s Caucus, your
country’s UN Mission and the President of the Bureau of the ICC Assembly of
States Parties (contact information can be found on the Women’s Caucus
website).
If you decide to use the
media as a strategy, share your press releases, statements or interviews with
us and we will post them on our website.
Check the Women’s Caucus
website for frequent updates, postings of press releases, media statements and
other background information.
While the nomination phase was
challenging in many respects and in many places, the election phase will be
equally challenging. Two examples have already arisen where women’s groups at
the national level have protested the nominee put forward by their country.
In Fiji, the government nominated a
retired Supreme Court justice, Timoci Tuivaga, who has been implicated in
efforts to abrogate Fiji’s constitution during the attempted coup in 2000.
Women’s groups have been vocal in their opposition to the candidate and have
received a great deal of media attention – some of which is posted on the
Women’s Caucus website. They are compiling detailed information about the
candidate in the form of a dossier to make available to the States Parties.
In Argentina, the government nominated a
current Supreme Court justice who has been charged numerous times with
allegations of corruption. Women’s groups protested the government’s
appointment of Justice Antonio Boggiano because of his history of corruption
and because the government passed over a highly qualified woman in the
process.
In both incidents, advocates at the
national level say that the governments did not follow the procedures required
by the Rome Statute for the nomination. The Women’s Caucus issued press
releases about these incidents and has insisted that the Bureau of the ICC
Assembly of States Parties be vigilant in ensuring that governments follow the
letter and spirit of the Rome Statute in the nomination process.
This election, therefore, provides an
opportunity to move away from the way in which this process usually occurs in
the international arena – through vote-trading and political deal-making – to
one which has the needs of justice and transparency at the center of concern.
It is also an opportunity to ensure that women play an equal part in the
formation of the world’s first permanent criminal court.
As we compile and confirm information
about the candidates, the Women’s Caucus will make the findings publicly
available and we will send updates to our networks as and when timely and
appropriate. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like assistance
or guidance in distributing information to the States Parties about individual
candidates.
In solidarity,
The Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice
P.O. Box 3541 Grand Central P.O.
New York, New York 10163 USA
Tel. (718) 626-2681 / Fax (718) 626-3528
Email: caucus@iccwomen.org / URL: www.iccwomen.org
----------------
Candidates:
Luis Maria Benitez Riera (Paraguay -
withdrawn on 13 December)
Rene Blattman (Bolivia)
Antonio Boggiano (Argentina)
Marc Bossuyt (Belgium)
Kocou A. Capo-Chichi (Benin)
Maureen Harding Clark (Ireland)
Ion Diaconu (Romania)
Fatoumata Dembele Dairra (Mali)
Jargalsaikhany Enkhsaikhan (Mongolia)
Adrian Fulford (United Kingdom)
Ioannis Giannidis (Greece)
Dimitar Gochev (Bulgaria)
Bunchhat Heng Vong (Cambodia)
Karl Hudson-Phillips (Trinidad & Tobago)
Claude Jorda (France)
Ivo Josipovic (Croatia)
Adolphus G. Karibi-Whyte (Nigeria)
Hajnalka Karpati (Hungary)
Joseph-Medard Katuala Kaba Kashala (DRC)
Philippe Kirsch (Canada)
Hans-Peter Kaul (Germany)
Erkki Kourula (Finland)
Akua Kuenyehia (Ghana)
Kamugumya S.K. Lugakingira (Tanzania)
Robert MacLean Ugarteche (Peru)
Doudou Ndir (Senegal)
Rafael Nieto Navia (Colombia)
Daniel D.N. Nsereko (Uganda)
Elizabeth Odio Benito (Costa Rica)
Barbara Ott (Switzerland)
Gheorghios M. Pikis (Cyprus)
Navanethem Pillay (South Africa)
Mauro Politi (Italy)
Almiro Rodrigues (Portugal)
Victor Rodriguez-Cedeno (Venezuela)
Mory Ousmane Sissoko (Niger)
Tuiloma Neroni Slade (Samoa)
Raymond C. Sock (Gambia)
Sang-hyun Song (Republic of Korea)
Sylvia H. Steiner (Brazil)
Timoci Tuivaga (Fiji)
Anita Usacka (Latvia)
Juan Antonio Yanez-Barnuevo (Spain)
Eleanora Zielinska (Poland)
Bostjan Zupancic (Slovenia)
------------------------------
Quote…
"May I take this opportunity to
encourage State Parties to nominate suitable women candidates to allow for
fair representation of female and male judges on the (ICC) as the Rome Statute
requires? Let us not thwart some of the most important advances on gender
justice that are embodied in the Statute by failing to act in practical ways
to implement them."
Sergio Vieira de Mello
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
to the 3rd Committee of the UN General Assembly
4 November 2002
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