Piotr Jozef Hofmanski, the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said The Hague-based court has been very successful in the first 20 years of its existence.
Hofmanski said though it will be difficult to fully assess the success of the international court, it has made a lot of progress.
Speaking with Nana Yaa Mensah on the Sunday Night programme on Asaase 99.5, he said the ICC has been very effective, especially in the area of reparations for victims.
“Let me begin by saying that we’re at the beginning of a very ambitious project. I think it will be difficult to assess the first 20 years of the court’s existence. We are indeed at the very beginning but still, I think there some reason to say that we [the ICC] are successful.”
“We are active now on four continents. We are doing investigations on 16 different situations. We already have 50 accused persons in the court. So I think it’s a lot in this short time…” he added.
Wheels of justice…
Commenting on the speed at which justice is being administered at the ICC, Hofmanski said the officers of the international court do a lot of work to expedite proceedings.
“I fully understand the lack of patience and that I understand that the victims are waiting for justice and in my personal view they are waiting too long…but at the same time…crimes under the jurisdiction of the court are really very complex and the cases are very complex.”
“And it’s true that in the international criminal justice the speed is very limited but we have the cases managed from The Hague and these concerns crimes committed on other continents … we have thousands of victims in every case,” Hofmanski added.
He said, “It is something that is very unique for the international court; we’re not only dealing with the criminal responsibility of the perpetrators but we always take care of victims and try to make the victim participation to the proceedings and we consider reparations for the victims and everything takes time.
“But I’ll say that we do a lot to expedite the proceedings to make our operations more effective…”
Hofmanski added, “I think that the greatest success [of the ICC] is the victim issue; the fact that we provide hundreds of thousands of reparations for victims especially from Africa because the first cases came from this continent.”
Watch the full interview below:
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