 "Photo: Marc Andrew Deley")
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), shared shared many anecdotes of his long career in human rights. He discussed his views on genocide, global human rights violations, and the ICC as a visionary legal organization in a lecture on Thursday.
At the sixth annual Owen M. Kupferschmid Human Rights Lecture, Ocampo was described as someone who "embodies an important revitalization of the idea to use the criminal court system to prosecute war criminals," said Daniel Kanstroom, faculty advisor for the Holocaust/Human Rights Project and Director of the BC Law International Human Rights Program. "In his current role, he stands at the forefront of the human rights movement."
Ocampo began his lecture by stressing the importance of the Nuremberg trials.
"The most important issue of Nuremberg was that it was a crime," he said. "It was not about legal proceedings, it was to control the states by saying that they can't just go kill people." This, according to Ocampo, greatly furthered the idea of global human rights.
"It was inspiring to hear from one of the leading figures in the development of an international court system, whose work as a prosecutor will ensure not only that individuals who have committed war crimes and genocide will be punished, but that a record of their atrocities will be preserved," said Nicole Mondschein, president of the Holocaust/Human Rights Project and BC Law '06.
The speaker also spoke about his experiences with genocide. Using the 1994 Rwandan massacre and the genocide in Yugoslavia in 1993, he argued that genocide is an expansive practice that the international community needs to work together to stop and prevent. In Rwanda, almost one million Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu moderates were massacred in a matter of weeks. Three million more lives were lost as a result of the Congo War.
From tragedies such as these came the call for an international court that would function similarly to the Nuremberg court, but would be in permanent existence. In 1998, a UN conference was called in Rome to discuss such a court. Because most nations shared views on the elements of the crimes and the need for a court, almost all of the countries participating voted for the statute for the ICC. The United States, however, did not support the statute at this time and continues to work to exempt U.S. nationals from the Court's jurisdiction.
The ICC legally came into existence on July 1, 2002, and in March of 2003 18 judges were sworn in. "It marked for the first time in human history that independent judges from five continents, sitting in a permanent jurisdiction, would apply universally defined criminal law," said Ocampo.
On April 21, 2003 Ocampo was unanimously voted as the first Chief Prosecutor for the ICC. With his background in precedent setting prosecutions in his native Argentina, he was very familiar with the trying of war crimes and other human rights violations.
In 1984-85, Ocampo brought the first case against top military commanders responsible for mass killings since Nuremberg. In the famous "Military Junta" trials, Ocampo helped to convict five of the nine senior commanders by presenting 700 cases of murder, kidnapping, and torture.
The speaker also was in charge of the extradition of former Argentine General Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason from the United States, as well as the investigation and prosecution of guerilla leaders responsible for two military rebellions in Argentina. In 1992 he established a private law firm, where he fought several cases on political bribery, freedom of expression, and journalists protection. He also represented the victims in the extradition case of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke and tried the chief of Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats.
Despite his experience in the field, the ICC still faces numerous challenges. Many countries are still intently fixed upon their national system of justice.
"We live in a totally different world. Everything is global; business is global, terrorism is global. We need a global justice system," he said.
Part of the problem with this need is that each country has different conceptions of law.
"In this country, if you have a problem, the state solves the conflict," said Ocampo. "In Brazil, Russia, or Argentina, the state is the problem." However, the speaker stressed that it is not just about law; the overall goal is to find the complex definition of justice for each country. For example, he asked a mother on one of his trips to Cambodia to define justice. "A bowl of rice for my kids," she replied.
"Dr. Moreno Ocampo's lecture was particularly relevant to the goals of the Holocaust/Human Rights Project, since as in the Nuremberg trials, the ICC allows us to bear witness to grave crimes, and offers retribution in an effort to prevent future harms," said Mondschein.
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