madam president i am proud to be chairing this parliament's delegation to the review conference for the international criminal court to celebrate how its establishment has helped build global justice and fight impunity for crimes against humanity and to represent our european union's determination in our common foreign and security policy to work towards the court's universal jurisdiction
in calling for better access to justice for victims we should acknowledge that fifteen of the twenty-four countries worldwide who have contributed to the trust fund for victims are our own eu member states but we should also note with humility that that means twelve eu members have not given such funding and that fourteen of our countries have neither designated national contact points nor responded to the annual survey as required by the charter
universal jurisdiction abroad starts with universal implementation here at home and madam president i have to regret that one of the first decisions of the uk's new coalition government is to go to the review conference to oppose jurisdiction for the crime of aggression and to resist belgium's proposal to include the use of prohibited weapons in internal conflict as a war crime
aggression the unlawful use of force against another state was prosecuted by the nuremberg and tokyo tribunals at the end of the second world war and i find it hard to understand why the icc should not be used to prosecute the war crimes of the twenty-first century
meanwhile how they justify saying that the use of poison gas or dumdum bullets is illegal if going across a border but not if staying within it i do not understand
they are saying that when saddam hussein gassed the marsh arabs or when demonstrators in gaza are shot with bullets that intentionally break into shrapnel inside their bodies the perpetrators are able to do so free from the fear of being held to account
quite simply they are wrong
