Originally issued as a CGS press release on January 30, 2004.
International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Selects American to Head Investigation into Atrocities in Uganda
Following yesterday’s announcement that the ICC member state Uganda had referred its own domestic situation to the court, Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has named Christine Chung, a former U.S. federal prosecutor from New York, to head the court’s first investigation into ongoing atrocities in northern Uganda.
“With the selection of the horrid atrocities in Uganda as the first case and the appointment of a U.S. investigator,” summarized Heather Hamilton, Vice President for Programs at Citizens for Global Solutions, “reality is starting to intrude on the boogey-man scenarios of the Court’s detractors.” U.S. critics of the ICC worry that the court will target Americans, a scenario that court supporters argue will never happen as long as U.S. courts conduct genuine investigations of serious allegations.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s referral of the situation in northern Uganda to the ICC is the first by a member state of the court. According to the UN news agency IRIN, up to 90% of the rebel forces in northern Uganda are children, and reports of abduction, mutilation, rape, and indiscriminate slaughter have risen rapidly over the last year.
“By moving swiftly to select a lead investigator for its first case, the ICC has yet again demonstrated that it is a fair and impartial court that has no time for politics,” commented Maggie Gardner, the International Law and Justice Program Manager at Citizens for Global Solutions. “An American investigator makes sense because the ICC is the embodiment of basic, all-American values of justice, accountability, human rights and the rule of law.”
Notes to Editors:
The ICC is the world’s only permanent international tribunal. Its jurisdiction covers genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after July 1, 2002. Without a Security Council referral, the ICC only has jurisdiction over those crimes committed on the territory of or by a national of a country that accepts the court’s jurisdiction. The court’s prosecutor has also been monitoring the ongoing atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another ICC member state.
Citizens for Global Solutions coordinates the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court, composed of legislative and governmental affairs offices of nearly forty American non-governmental organizations committed to the cause of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The WICC supports and provides materials and information for education and advocacy about the Court. For more information, visit http://www.usaforicc.org/wicc/.
