Bringing Fairness to International Justice: a Handbook on the International Criminal Court for Defense Lawyers in Africa
Jolyon Ford
Pretoria (Tshwane),: Institute for Security Studies, 2009
From the Introduction:
Consider the following six brief and related statements:
1. Impunity and inaction in response to the most serious crimes of concern to the
international community represent a failure to meet human rights principles,
to respect victims, and to deal with issues affecting future peace.
2.A global consensus exists on the need to provide an acceptable, principled
international criminal justice system as a means to deal with perpetrators of
international crimes: that consensus is reflected in the Rome Statute of the
ICC.
3.The ICC is only likely to be perceived as just, effective, legitimate and
sustainable to the extent that it is fair in its treatment of those brought before
it.
4. Representation by a competent independent legal defence counsel is, in turn,
considered indispensible to fair investigations and trials in the ICC and other
international criminal tribunals.
5.The role of the defence lawyer in ensuring systematic fairness in international
justice deserves more attention generally.
6.There is, in particular, an ongoing need for more awareness raising and
capacity building in order to enable African lawyers to engage in the work of
the ICC in general and in Africa, including by acting as defence counsel or
assistants.
This handbook explores some of the issues raised in these statements with a view
to increasing African lawyers’ understanding of, and engagement, with the ICC
and its processes and in particular the role of defence counsel, in order to help
bring fairness to international justice.
