Jul 17, 2006

July 17th: World Day For International Justice


Governments, civil society organizations, legal associations, students and activists around the globe will celebrate World Day for International Justice on July 17th
Who:
Governments, civil society organizations, legal associations, students and activists around the globe will celebrate World Day for International Justice on July 17th.

What:
World Day for International Justice recognizes the nascent and strengthening system of international justice that has emerged since the Nuremburg and Tokyo Trials after World War II. Numerous efforts to provide justice and redress for the most unspeakable acts of inhumanity have brought forth increasingly powerful international justice mechanisms from the International Court of Justice, to the ad hoc tribunals of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and, as of July 1st of this year, the historic International Criminal Court (ICC).

Why:
The last century has been the bloodiest in human history with hundreds of millions of casualties of mass rape, forced expulsion, disappearances, torture, slavery and other assaults on human dignity.

A permanent deterrent to the architects of such horrific crimes was created on July 1st, 2002, when the jurisdiction of the ICC began. July 17th was chosen as the day to mark this occasion because it is the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC. Since that day in 1998, one hundred thirty-nine countries have signed the Courts treaty and nearly eighty States, representative of every region of the world, have ratified it.

The ICC is the first permanent and independent international judicial institution capable of trying individuals accused of the most serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, including the crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.