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Posted 10:15 AM
by Mary
Resolution ICC-ASP/4/Res.4
Adopted at the 4th plenary meeting on 3 December 2005, by consensus
ICC-ASP/4/Res.4
Strengthening the International Criminal Court and the Assembly of States Parties
The Assembly of States Parties,
Mindful that each individual State has the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, that the conscience of humanity continues to be deeply shocked by unimaginable atrocities in various parts of the world, and that the need to prevent the most serious crimes of concern to the international community, and to put an end to the impunity of the perpetrators of such crimes, is now widely acknowledged,
Convinced that the International Criminal Court is an essential means of promoting respect for international humanitarian law and human rights, thus contributing to freedom, security, justice and the rule of law as well as to the prevention of armed conflicts, the preservation of peace and the strengthening of international security and the advancement of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconciliation with a view to achieving sustainable peace, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations…
Posted 12:00 PM
by Mary
IAEA chief: 'Nuclear weapons mean world destruction'
(Filed: 10/12/2005)
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said the world must abandon nuclear weapons or face self-destruction.
Mr ElBaradei was speaking in Norway as he collected the Nobel peace prize, which he shared with the IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog.
"If we hope to escape self-destruction, then I believe nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience, and no role in our security," Mr ElBaradei said in his acceptance speech.
"The hard part is: how do we create an environment in which all of us would look at nuclear weapons the way we look at slavery or genocide, as a taboo and a historical anomaly?"
The IAEA and Mr ElBaradei won the prize for their drive to control the spread of nuclear weapons, especially to terrorists.
The 63-year-old Egyptian and Yukiya Amano, the IAEA's board of governors chairman, accepted the peace prize 60 years after the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Mr ElBaradei said that six decades since the end of the Second World War, the threat of a nuclear nightmare still remained.
He emphasised international concerns about possible atomic weapons programmes in Iran and North Korea, and terrorists' increasingly sophisticated efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.
"Our security strategies have not yet caught up with the security threats we are facing," he said.
"The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people but is has also removed barriers that confined and localized security threats."
Posted 11:43 AM
by Mary
TERRORISM: TORTURE IS AN INSTRUMENT OF TERROR, SAYS ANNAN
http://www.adnki.com/ New York, 9 Dec. (AKI) - Torture can never be an instrument to fight terror because it is an instrument of terror, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, in his annual Human Rights Day message. He decried the recent trend of countries claiming exceptions to the international prohibition against the practice and called for all states to honour the legally established ban on torture and to vigorously combat the impunity of those who perpetrate it.
He also urged all countries that have not yet done so to ratify the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The message also urges all states to give "independent access to detainees within their control," to the UN expert on torture.
Last month, five independent United Nations human rights experts, including the Special Rapporteur on torture, rejected a United States invitation to visit its detention base in Guantanamo, Cuba, because Washington did not accept standard terms for a “credible, objective and fair assessment,” including their ability to conduct private interviews with detainees.
The Secretary-General, in his message on Human Rights Day, observed annually on 10 December, says unlimited access is an essential protection for individuals in detention because their isolation makes them especially vulnerable to abuse. “Together, we must give voice, and redress, to abused detainees as well as to all victims and survivors of torture,” he says.
Acknowledging that the threat of terror is “real and immediate,” he nevertheless points out that fear of terrorists can never justify adopting their methods. “Let us be clear: torture can never be an instrument to fight terror, for torture is an instrument of terror,” he declares.
Broadening this argument, the Secretary-General warned against complacency over cruel and inhuman punishment, which tends to disproportionately affect imprisoned, politically powerless and economically deprived people. “Instead, we must respond to this evil wherever we find it by reaffirming humanity’s most basic values,” Annan said in the message.
His Human Rights Day message also coincides with growing pressure on the US government over reports of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe and hundreds of 'ghost' flights flying in and out of European airports, thought to have been transporting terror suspects to countries where they may suffer torture. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has spent most of her European tour this week defending the US administration against such claims.
