The launch of this fund comes at a critical moment in the evolution of the ICC; in a few weeks time we are to start the first trial of this new court, the case against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, who is alleged to be a rebel who has committed a series of offences concerning the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the context of civil war. The Trial Chamber, over which I preside, has nearly completed all of the pre-trial preparatory work – which has been vast, given we have had to apply, indeed to adopt for the first time, procedures for effective trials at our fledgling court.

I now realise that I have spent 30 years as a barrister, and more latterly as a judge, in blissful, woeful ignorance. My working life until recently has been exclusively confined to what I now understand to be the quiet and peaceful backwater of the criminal justice system of England and Wales – a place where, notwithstanding prison overcrowding and other ills, the rule of law and effective and speedy justice are achieved in the vast majority of cases. My new job has been a rude awakening.
From the moment the three judges started work on the case, we have been brought face-to-face with the hard realities, the really grim circumstances, facing thousands, probably millions, of people in the DRC.

The single biggest task for the bench, aside from the key necessity of trying the accused fairly, is to secure access to our court for the victims of the crimes alleged against the defendant and the witnesses called by the prosecution as proof of its case. We have specific and extensive statutory duties towards both groups. One of the really innovative and progressive features of our trials is the unique opportunity afforded to victims to participate in the case. We are trying to give this real effect, so that their views and concerns can be incorporated into the process, to ensure that our cases do not turn into a conventional fight between an impersonal prosecutor and the defendant.

Given the charges the accused faces, unsurprisingly the core group of victims and witnesses are former child soldiers, and wholly irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the defendant, there is probably little doubt that in many instances their lives will have been seriously disturbed, degraded and reduced by the violent events they experienced and endured.

In a way that does not render the case unfair for the accused, the judges want to give them their voice, if they wish to speak personally or through representatives, on issues affecting their personal interests.  

It is in this context that the interface between the work of the ICC and the work of Human Rights Defenders all over the world becomes clear. It is often only through the efforts of lawyers as Liliana Uribe that cases are ever brought to the attention of the public and, though all too rarely, before a court of law. Without them, the chances of launching and sustaining prosecutions against serious human rights abusers are significantly reduced. Without them, victims will be unrepresented, and denied any opportunity to record their histories in a juridical setting and to receive at least some kind of recognition, justice and compensation.

The process for the Trial Chamber of providing protection for those victims who want to participate in this first trial has been fraught with difficulties, and to a large extent the modest successes we have achieved thus far have only been possible because of the work of a seriously impressive small group of human rights lawyers, and including lawyers from 'Avocats sans Frontières' who have been briefed to act in the most difficult circumstances, unstintingly offering their skills and time to represent young people who have experienced traumas and events that are barely comprehensible to most of us in this room. This has been a truly humbling experience for me; their work and their clients are a far cry from the well-healed city fraudsters, even from the charming drug dealers from Notting Hill, who I spent so many years defending at Southwark and Knightsbridge Crown Courts.

And they are needed; one of the most disturbing events during the pre-trial stage of the Lubanga trial has been to watch the prosecution’s witness list change and reduce because, it is said, of the fears of the witnesses as to the consequences for them if it ever became known that they had cooperated with the court. That is not for a moment to say the defendant has been himself in any way involved in improper activity, but the concerns, we are told, are real; without additional human rights defenders, a vulnerable and exploited group of young people from the centre of Africa are, I suspect, being excluded from our proceedings. That should be of concern to the entire international community. On a linked subject, I am delighted to hear that the work of the peace brigades  has recently extended to the DRC, training NGOs to protect themselves. They play a key role in the work of our court.

Therefore, from a hands-on judicial perspective, I wish join other voices in giving this fund a strong and loud endorsement. The view from where I sit is that the lawyers who will be funded by it contribute uniquely to making justice possible when otherwise there would be a truly deadly silence and concomitant impunity for the perpetrators.

The only oddity is, however, that I never thought I would hear myself saying in public that lawyers need more money!!”