The Beijing Platform for Action identified as among its critical areas of concern the issues of violence against women, the effects of armed conflict on women and human rights of women. The Platform included as components of these concerns the need to end impunity for the perpetrators of violence against women (both in armed conflict situations as well as peace time), the need to ensure women’s access to justice and reparations, as well as the need to include women more systematically in all levels of justice and peace-making processes. The Platform also emphasized the need for national law reform in order to “ensure equality and non-discrimination under the law and in practice.”

As a mechanism designed to end the impunity long enjoyed by perpetrators of egregious crimes, and especially with regard to crimes of sexual and gender violence, the ICC is a response to one of the Platform’s major objectives. It is also a mechanism whose basic design is infused with a gender perspective which is intended to ensure that its procedures and structure are respectful of and responsive to the realities of women and victims of sexual and gender violence. Further, ratification of the treaty creating the Court will require national laws be in conformity with the ICC Statute. In this way, the ICC is both an end in itself as well as a means of furthering the Beijing agenda. It represents an achievement of many of the commitments in the Platform for Action as well as a mechanism through which to achieve others.

This publication aims to show the linkages between the Rome Statute and the Platform for Action with the following objectives:

• disseminate information on the gender gains in the ICC statute to the global women’s human rights community. Some women working on issues of women’s rights have found the ICC process too technical, legalistic and removed from their day-to-day experiences of violations of women’s rights. Many others who have otherwise found instruments like CEDAW and the Platform useful tools in their struggles do not have information on the ICC and its relevance and importance to women. The Beijing +5 review in June 2000 and the prepcoms leading up to it provide an opportunity for dissemination of critical information about the ICC and its potential to address violations of women’s human rights.
  
• make links and establish patterns in the challenges faced by women’s caucuses struggling to achieve gender parity and incorporate gender perspectives in the UN processes from the 1993 UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. Women’s Caucuses have, in all the UN processes, consistently faced strong opposition and challenges from anti-choice groups and fundamentalist states to our demands to put an end to violations of women’s human rights. The Women’s Caucus in the ICC continues to face these challenges, emphasizing the need for all working on the issue of women’s rights from the human rights perspective to evolve strategies to effectively deal with these challenges.
  
• mobilize women working on the Beijing +5 process to assist with the lobby of the crucial negotiations in these latter stages of the ICC process. The final text on the rules of procedure and evidence and elements of crimes will be adopted in June 2000 at a three-week prepcom immediately following the Beijing +5 review. We hope that some of the women attending the + 5 review will join in the lobby to show support and a strong presence of women internationally concerned with the issues the ICC Women’s Caucus advocate. (Details of these issues are outlined in the section on ‘Current negotiations in the ICC)
  
• highlight the potential the ICC represents for women all over the world to initiate and consolidate law reforms upon its ratification and in furtherance of the Platform for Action. With the lead-up to the Beijing +5 review process, it is critical that we ensure that the ICC is highlighted as a vital part of the review process agenda so that governments are reminded by women all over the world of their obligation to ratify the ICC Statute.