Amnesty urges international court

Amnesty International is lobbying the Government to ratify, by the end of September, the statute establishing a permanent International Criminal Court.

The organisation's Irish section began the campaign yesterday during the Council of Europe conference on human rights at Dublin Castle. Its director, Ms Mary Lawlor, said the court - which would deal with genocide, other crimes against humanity and war crimes - could come into being only when 60 states ratified the Rome statute which set it up in 1998.

Only seven have so far done so, but, Ms Lawlor added, Amnesty's goal was to have the court in operation by next January 1st. To achieve this, Ireland must ratify the statute by September 30th, 2000, she said.

Prof William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, said the court was "the fulfilment of a promise dating back to World War Two and the Nuremberg trials".

The process of setting it up had taken eight years, but a number of important "victories" had been won, including the provision that the body would have an independent prosecutor.

These victories had not been welcomed by the US, which remained hostile to the court.

Ms Anne Marlborough, a law lecturer in the University of Limerick, said ratification was a relatively simple matter, but it required legislation and Dail support. ail. Ireland had signed the statute, and was obliged "morally and even to an extent legally" to ratify it. It did not automatically follow that we would, however.

"We are in the embarrassing situation at this [the human rights] conference of being the only Council of Europe member not to have ratified the Convention on Human Rights," she said.