Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Principality of Liechtenstein has invited members of the Assembly of States Parties to explore ways of improving the general proceedings and discussions at the ASP.
Aurelia Frick in taking stock of the 14th session of the ASP that was held in The Hague, said,
“The Assembly has ceased to be a place to rally political support for the Court, but its work has been overshadowed by individual States Parties pursuing national agendas, contrary to key provisions of the Rome Statute. States Parties supportive of the Court found themselves again on the defensive, rather than actively promoting positive messages about cooperation, complementarity and universality, and in the end agreed under strong pressure to a questionable compromise solution, bordering on undermining the integrity of the Court’s proceedings.”
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She is optimistic that, “The Assembly can again play a positive role in support of the Court instead of an exercise in damage control and hope to have a dialogue with you to this end.”
Aurelia is now encouraging ASP to the Rome Statute to share their ideas either with them bilaterally or through the network of its members on how to improve the proceedings.
This is comes after the 14th Session of the ASP was greatly overshadowed by Kenya and South Africa’s agenda items that went beyond the mandate of the Assembly as defined in Article 112 of the Rome Statute and deal with judicial matters currently pending before the court.
Kenya had requested the inclusion of a supplementary agenda item entitled “Review the application and implementation of amendments to Rules and Procedure and Evidence introduced at the 12th Assembly”. This relates to concerns regarding the Trial Chamber’s ‘Decision on Prosecution Request for Admission of Prior Recorded Testimony’ issued on 19 August 2015 in the case of The Prosecutor v. William Samoei Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang.
Further, Kenya had also requested the President of the Assembly “to immediately appoint an independent mechanism to audit the Prosecutor’s witness identification and recruitment process”. It also calls for the ICC to suspend the cases while awaiting the determination of the audit.
South Africa has proposed a supplementary agenda item at the ASP entitled “Application and Implementation of Article 97 and Article 98.”
However, during the sessions, Liechtenstein stated that, “The ASP is a legislative organ, must be careful to avoid impression of interference in the ICC‘s judicial process”
#ASP is a legislative organ, must be careful to avoid impression of interference in the #ICC‘s judicial process — Liechtenstein UN (@LiechtensteinUN) November 19, 2015
