At the forthcoming Seventh International Criminal Court (ICC) Assembly of States Parties Meeting in the Hague, two briefing sessions on the ICC Legal Tools will be held. The focus of the briefing sessions is ‘The ICC Legal Tools: its Services, Goals, Status and Further Development’.

Meeting Agendas:

1) State-sponsored meeting, Wednesday, 19 November 2008, 13:00-14:45h, Room Oceania2 :

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SESSION HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM THURSDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2008, TO WEDNESDAY, 19 NOVEMBER.

Introduction of the ICC Legal Tools Project and its outsourcing partners

Klaus Rackwitz, Senior Administrative Manager, ICC Office of the Prosecutor

‘The Legal Tools Project: its services, goals, status and further development’

Morten Bergsmo, Senior Researcher, PRIO

Demonstrating the functions of the ICC Database on Implementing Legislation

Dr. Olympia Bekou, Head of the ICJ Unit, Human Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham

Questions and Answers

Hosted by the Netherlands and co-sponsored by the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of Austria, the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom.

2) Introduction to the ICC Legal Tools Project for NGOs, Thursday 20 November, 11:00-12:00h, Africa Room

Opening Remarks

Klaus Rackwitz, Senior Administrative Manager, ICC Office of the Prosecutor

Gilbert Bitti, Senior Legal Advisor, Pre-Trial Division of the ICC.

Introductions by the Legal Tools Outsourcing Partners

‘The Status of the Legal Tools Project, including a demonstration of the Case Matrix’

Morten Bergsmo, Senior Researcher, PRIO

Questions and Comments

The events are organised and coordinated by the Human Rights Law Centre, on behalf of the ICC Legal Tools and its associated partners. Special thanks to the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law for the coordination of the State-sponsored meeting.

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.

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 .

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

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.

Dr. Olympia Bekou from the Human Rights Law Centre and representatives from the Legal Tools Partner’s Network (LTPN) will participate in the meeting of the EU Working Group on International Law (COJUR)/ICC which convenes in Brussels on 29^th May 2008.

On behalf of the LTPN, Dr. Bekou will give a presentation on the EU and the ICC Legal Tools Partners. She will be joined by Morten Bergsmo, Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), and Gilbert Bitti, Senior Legal Advisor, Pre-Trial Division of the ICC.

Assembling senior representatives from foreign ministries of the 27 EU member states, the EU focal points for the ICC, as well as other relevant actors from EU institutions the COJUR meeting provides an excellent opportunity for the Network to strengthen the links with the EU community and lay the basis for successful future cooperation.

Meeting Agenda:

The ICC Legal Tools Project and the EU: towards a successful partnership

Presentation of the Legal Tools:

Morten Bergsmo, Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), and Gilbert Bitti, Senior Legal Advisor, Pre-Trial Division of the ICC.

EU and the ICC Legal Tools Partners:

Dr Olympia Bekou , University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre

We’ll be meeting in Saarbrücken on June 25th to discuss the integration of our various data projects with the Court’s systems.  Pocket protectors all round!