Outsourcing of the Legal Tools Web Collections

At its meeting on 17 October 2008, the International Criminal Court Legal Tools Advisory Committee (LTAC) approved the outsourcing of the administration and web-hosting of the Legal Tools collections and databases to the new Legal Tools Database (LTD) and Website (LTW), to be accessed through an exclusive link on the ICC’s website.  The ICC will now establish a contractual basis for this outsourcing.

On 6 October 2008, Morten Bergsmo, Senior Researcher at PRIO, and Klaus Rackwitz, Senior Administrative Manager at the ICC Office of the Prosecutor, met with the team at the University of Saarbrücken in Germany to discuss their development of the LTD and LTW, a process that is virtually completed.  The LTW is supported by the excellent SINO search engine, as well as a separated browse function, both of which make the LTW accessible and efficient. The LTD and LTW are planned to go online in early 2009, with 35000 documents already being integrated into the LTD.

Dieter Meurer Prize for Legal Informatics in 2008 awarded for the Development of the Case Matrix

Morten Bergsmo from PRIO and Ralph Hecksteden of the University of Saarland in Germany have been awarded the Dieter Meurer Prize for Legal Informatics in 2008 by the German Association for Computing in the Judiciary and the German-language legal information service provider ‘juris GmbH’ for the development of the Case Matrix.

The Dieter Meurer prize is awarded to information technology projects with a high degree of practical relevance.

 The Case Matrix has been created by Morten Bergsmo during his time at the International Criminal Court (ICC), and its programme and infrastructure have been further developed by the Institute for Law and Informatics at Saarland University in Germany pursuant to directions from the ICC. The Case Matrix is a unique, law-driven case management tool that provides an explanation of the elements of crimes and legal requirements of modes of liability for all crimes in the ICC Statute, serves as a user’s guide to how one could prove international crimes and modes of liability, and provides a database service to organise and present the potential evidence in a case. With the aid of the Case Matrix, the presence of all legal elements of crimes can be verified, so that even the most complicated cases become better organised and more transparent for all participants, and gaps in the chains of proof are self-evident.

 For further information on the Dieter Meurer Prize, see https://www.edvgt.de/pages/dieter-meurer-foerderpreis-rechtsinformatik/dieter-meurer-foerderpreis-2008-english.php and for further information about the Case Matrix, see http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/ICC-CaseMatrix_ENG.pdf .

Legal Tools Cooperation Agreements signed with the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has concluded a Legal Tools Co-operation Agreement with the ‘Track Impunity Always’ (TRIAL) Association in Switzerland, and has renewed Cooperation Agreements with its outsourcing partners the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR), the Asser Institute and the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) as well as the Institute of International Law and International Relations at the University of Graz. Together with the International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC) at the University of Marburg and the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) at the University of Nottingham, they now comprise the current list of outsourcing partners and members of the Legal Tools Outsourcing Partners (LTOP) Network.

Further outsourcing partners are still required; efforts are currently being made to identify a suitable French-speaking outsourcing partner, and outsourcing partners are also required from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia during the next two to three years.

To find out more about the Legal Tools project and the work of the outsourcing partners, see http://www.icc-cpi.int/legal_tools.html

Conference on the Genocide Convention in Marburg/Frankfurt, 4 to 6 December 2008

On 8 December 1948 the General Assembly of the UN adopted a Convention establishing “Genocide” as a criminal norm. However, it took fifty years until this crime was prosecuted before an international criminal tribunal in the Akayesu Case before the ICTR. Even if the crime of genocide is perceived of as the worst of all international crimes, its application is anything but clear. In addition there is a certain conflict between genocide as a criminal norm and the prohibition of genocide as an obligation under public international law.
The 60th Anniversary of the Genocide Convention is a perfect time to reflect on the origins of the Convention, its present difficulties and the future prospects. The International Research and Documentation Centre for War Crimes Trials (ICWC) at the University of Marburg has thus organized an international conference from 4 to 6 December 2008 in Marburg and Frankfurt (Germany) to discuss the relevant issues concerning the Genocide Convention.

For further information please refer to the website of the conference.