Summary of statement by Hon. Elizabeth Odio-Benito I wish to share some of my experiences of my work at the ICTY with the audience. The tribunal was set up while the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia was still on going. It was inspired by the tribunals that had been set up Nuremberg and Tokyo. Since then there had been no experiences with international tribunals. In the beginning, we were only eleven judges, one secretary and three legal assistants. We started to draw rules of procedures. It was clear from the beginning that it would be necessary to have rules ensuring protection for victims and witnesses and the drafting group tried to include this in the rules. These rules was especially important concerning victims of sexual violence. At this moment we were only two women and we tried to share some ideas with our male colleagues. It was a difficult task. About one year after the tribunal was set up, we faced the first public appearance of the court. I was one of the three judges in this trial. I noticed that rape and sexual violence was absent in the indictment. This being my first experience as a judge, I did not always behave in the traditional way. I pointed out the necessity to examine crimes of rape and sexual violence too. Everybody was very shocked by this. But very soon they learned that this would be very successful, as we had pointed out these facts, the charges of sexual violence started to appear among the charges.
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