The ICC PrepCom began this morning. This Prepcom, running from 12-30 June, will be the last to deal with the Elements Annex and Rules of Procedure and Evidence. As such, there are still several contentious issues relating to gender that will be resolved here. We have attached a list of the priority concerns below. One issue we, and many others around the world, are watching very closely is the attempt by the U.S. to weaken the Court to give the Security Council more control over the cases that can come before the ICC and to prevent U.S. nationals from being within the Court's jurisdiction. 

The U.S. has formalized its proposal and it will now be considered as part of the Prepcom negotiations. It is imperative that your foreign ministries hear from you that they should reject the U.S.' efforts. Since March, we have been circulating alerts within the U.S. as well as among our international affiliates on this matter. Copies of the action alert can be found on our website: http://www.iccwomen.org. It contains a version for U.S. citizens to send to President Clinton and other appropriate U.S. officials and a different version for our international affiliates to send to foreign ministries. 

This morning at the opening plenary of the session, Judge Navanithem Pillay, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, addressed the body and spoke about the need for an independent court. There is a strong presence of women here watching the proceedings at this Prepcom but we will need to rely on your support as well to ensure that the historic gender gains in the Rome Statute are not undermined in this final negotiation and that the U.S. is not allowed to corrupt the future Court nor the process. We will be in touch later in the week.