IJCentral: International Justice Central

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court is facing serious logistical and legal challenges in 2010 as financial constraints could mean that three major trials will be forced to compete for time and space in a single courtroom.

But the issues facing the international body go far beyond courtroom logistics.

As the United States, which is not a member of the court, looks on from the outside, many of the 110 nations that have ratified the treaty that created the judicial body are beginning to question whether the tens of millions that have gone to finance the court over the past seven years has been well spent.

After all that time and money, the court has merely one trial - and one courtroom - to show for its efforts.

That’s due to change after the first of the year, when three separate cases - against Thomas Lubanga; Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudujolo; and Jean-Pierre Bemba - all from the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to be under way. But to save money, all three are likely to be forced to share a single courtroom, creating a logistical nightmare.

Practically, this means that one trial will likely be held in the morning and another in the afternoon. When one of those trials enters recess, a third could be conducted.

The move also threatens the right of defendants to be tried within a reasonable amount of time.

“It’s a concern to think that we can finally get to the stage where we have ... defendants before the court and we’re told there aren’t enough resources to facilitate the trials in an expeditious manner, and of course that impacts on the fair trial rights of the defendants,” said Lorraine Smith, who monitors the ICC for the International Bar Association.

Proceedings in the case of former militia leader Lubanga have been stalled for several months, but are now scheduled to resume on Jan. 6.

The trial of ex-militia chiefs Katanga and Ngudujolo, which began on Nov. 26, was adjourned on Dec. 2 and will resume on Jan. 26.

The case of former vice-president Bemba, accused of crimes in the Central African Republic, will start on April 27.

Analysts are wondering how the court will cope.

“It’s quite difficult to manage all of those (cases) with limited facilities and limited resources,” said Elizabeth Evenson, a lawyer with the international justice program at Human Rights Watch.

The problem stems from the fact that the court’s budget assumed that cases could be held consecutively, rather than simultaneously.

If worse comes to worse, officials say they would consider dipping into the court’s $14.45 million contingency fund, a move opposed by outside observers.

“We are not comfortable with resorting to the contingency fund where the particular activity is foreseeable,” said Smith of the international bar association.

But providing adequate financing for the court has become a growing problem in recent years.

In November, the 110 nations that finance the court approved a $148.8 million budget for 2010, up from the $137 million approved for the current year.

Jonathan O’Donohue, a legal adviser for Amnesty International, faulted last year’s budget process for slashing $7.2 million from the court’s proposed budget, a move he said “undermined the integrity of the process” and ignored the advice of experts who scrutinized the court’s proposed budget.” Yet, even O’Donohue said he understands why countries that finance the court are beginning to wonder what they’re getting for their money.

“You’re looking at a court that’s seven years old and has only recently begun its first case,” he said, referring to the Lubanga trial. “At this particular point in the court’s history, there are concerns that there is a lot of investment without a lot of results.” But O’Donohue said it would be a mistake for the states to total up “the first seven budgets and conclude those hundreds of millions of euro are the cost for the one trial that is taking place.” There is also a growing awareness that international justice is a very expensive venture, as already seen by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The tribunal for the former Yugoslavia alone has cost well over $1 billion.

“International justice can be very expensive in terms of setting up and running a court,” O’Donohue said, pointing to the costs of salaries, building space, travel, investigations, translators and legal aid for defendants and victims, among other expenses.

And the recent international financial crisis has forced an increasing number of states to ask if they can afford international justice.

“We are enduring an economic crisis in proportions not seen since the great depression,” said Francisco Aguilar-Urbina, the Costa Rican ambassador to The Netherlands who served as the facilitator of the 2010 working group that produced the court’s budget. “It’s very difficult to give more money 1/8to the court3/8, when at home people are left without hospitals, schools and basic services.”

Source:  McClatchy

Rachel Irwin is a reporter in The Hague who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.