Side-Event to the 2023 Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC
“The impact of the length of proceedings on reparative justice and the multi-generational dimension of victimization for international crimes”
Statement by Mr Erki Kodar, Vice Minister, Undersecretary of Legal and Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic Estonia
7 December 2023, New York
I would like to thank all the co-sponsors for organizing this side-event and Ambassador Maurizio Massari and Italian Permanent Mission for kindly hosting the event.
With your permission, I would like to concentrate in my opening remarks to reparative justice both in the context of the Rome Statute and shortly also in national proceedings.
The Rome Statute has been a revolutionary instrument in many respects. One of them being the fact that for the first time in the history of the international criminal law, victims have been considered as something more than possible witnesses that might need special protection. The Rome Statute recognises victims as a party to the criminal proceedings, and it specifically recognises the right of the victims of serious crimes to get reparations for the harm caused to them.
According to the Rome Statute, a special body has been created within the ICC for the benefit of victims of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, and of the families of such victims – the Trust Fund for Victims. The Trust Fund has been vested with a twofold mandate: 1) to implement Court-ordered reparation awards directed against a convicted person; and 2) to enable victims of crimes under investigation of the ICC and their families who have suffered physical, psychological and/or material harm, to receive assistance separately from, and prior to, a conviction by the Court.
The ICC as any other criminal jurisdiction concentrates on establishing the individual responsibility of an indicted person. This means that within the criminal process only a fraction of actual situation victims might be embraced. It is also inevitable, that criminal proceedings take time, sometimes a lot of time. At the same time, the lives of the victims cannot be put on hold until one day justice is finally delivered, and the court can finally decide on the reparations. And then there is always a chance that the defendant will be acquitted – an acquittal unfortunately does not mean that the victims have not suffered.
Another issue is the disproportionate lack of attention and finances available to victims as compared to the perpetrators. So far, the system of international criminal law has mainly concentrated on retribution and left the reparative justice orphaned.
The TFV and the ICC in general act based on the overarching principle of complementarity. This also affects directly the operations of the TFV. The possibility of the TFV to step in either through court ordered reparations or through its broader programs to repair the damages suffered by the victims in situation countries does not replace or displace a State’s own responsibility to repair. They may complement and/or strengthen a government’s own reparative programmes or activities, if possible, in alignment with other efforts of the international community.
On national level, in the case of Estonia, the principles of restorative justice have also been under attention in recent years in order to give a stronger voice to the victims. The participation of victims in criminal proceedings, their access to relief services and assistance available to them have been improved. A state prosecutor specialising to juveniles and the treatment of victims has been appointed in the Prosecutor’s Office. An Agreement between the Prosecutor’s Office and the Estonian Bar Association was concluded for engaging victims of crimes in the criminal investigation phase. Not to mention that civil society and media have also contributed in raising awareness of victims’ rights and restorative justice.
I hope that today’s discussions can share best practice and vision for a better reparative justice to put victims to the centre of attention both on national and international level.
I thank you for your attention.