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Hon’ble Dr Justice J. M. C. Antunes,International Judge, Court of Appeal ofEast Timor (front row, on left) at theConferenceage 18. Now, where the child is over 12, he or she may have to meet an “integrationtest!!” a provision that is in apparent breach of international law (This breach has beenverified within the Article 1 of the CRC and article 8 of ECHR).Issues concerning separated children who are not refugee seekers have not beensufficiently addressed; there are many separated children who travel to Europe to escapesituations of extreme poverty, or who may have been trafficked for the purpose ofexploitation and such children may often apply for asylum.In conclusion to this part of my speech, it is essential that the development of commonInternational Community asylum and immigration policy does more than entrench currentpolicy and practice failings and does not lead to “lowest common denominator” policies.Beyond what has already been agreed, it is of course also vital to look to the future.We are now having the first phase of the new Asylum System. In my point of view the development of the second phase ofasylum must recognise that stronger safeguards for children are necessary particularly given the increase in the number ofchildren who may be trafficked.Another issue that I want to talk about is: The Child SoldiersChildren who are exposed to the war and enclosed in war zones, whose families are torn apart, can be drawn into thefighting and forced to witness or perpetrate atrocities, sometimes against their own families. They can be scarred for life,their childhoods shattered. Every child has the right to a normal childhood and to develop as a human being. This howeverseems to be forgotten in many places in the world.In war time children are helpless witnesses of atrocities. They may themselves be mutilated and imprisoned or otherwiseseparated from their families and are often forced to flee. The child-soldiers may be recruited among the children who areleft to themselves in conflict zones. Cut off from the environment familiar to them, they lack any certainty as to their futureand the whereabouts of their loved ones. In other many countries at war, children may equally be recruited as soldiersbecause of their social conditions, such as street violence, extreme poverty and a lack of support structures. Among otherreasons, children are enlisted as soldiers because they are easily manipulated, are not fully aware of the dangers and haveunformed notions of right and wrong.Often, forced recruitment of children into armed forces or groups is used as a means of terror and blackmail againstcivilians. In addition to taking a direct part in hostilities, children can be used as spies, messengers, domestics, sexual slaves,etc, etc. Whatever their circumstances, they are abused and put themselves under a terrible risk to their lives. Childsoldiersare deprived of a family, deprived of an education and all the advantages that would otherwise help them bechildren and prepare them for being adults. Armed with lethal weapons, plied with alcohol and drugs to incite them toviolence and fearlessness, forced into dependence on the group that enlisted them, perfectly incapable to find a way out,children become loose cannons, a danger to themselves and others. At the end, child-soldiers will suffer from a deeptrauma that will persist much time after the fighting has stopped.I finish with a small part of the text of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and its AdditionalProtocol of 1977, where it says:“The parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that childrenwho have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilitiesand, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces”What should we say about the children of Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia,Uganda, Kosovo, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, East Timor, and manyothers around the world! The only thing they have now is to live the rest of their liveswithout ever having been... children!Lets think about this.Hon’ble Dr Justice J. M. C. Antunes, atthe Reception organised by SupremeCourt of India Bar Association at NewDelhi--60--
5th International Conference of Chief Justices of the WorldAddress byHon’ble Madam Justice Sarada ShresthaJudge of the Supreme Court of NepalWhen I stand before you, I remember visiting Palaces and gardens, and movie theatresof Lucknow during my student days at the University of Lucknow Law School where Ispent three years pursuing LLM and PGDC studies. Lucknow is historic also in thesense that it has always been at the forefront of the political and social movements. Manya times ideas, views and movements that originate in Lucknow take concrete shape inDelhi and influence the world.I would also like to thank the organizers for selecting a very suitable theme for theconference. We are discussing the issue of international law and its influence at a timewhen deliberations are being made to expand the role of United Nations for addressingthe problems of terrorism, for ensuring better protection of human rights and tacklingeconomic problem. Time has certainly come to make the United Nations, more particularlyHon’ble Madam Justice Sarada Shrestha,Judge of the Supreme Court of Nepaladdressing the Conferenceits Security Council more representative in character and more effective in addressing the challenges facing our time andcontributing to peace building.The selection of the theme is timely also in the sense that it is especially important for organizations and people to properlyunderstand the influence of international law. The exponential growth of the international law has influenced every aspect ofhuman activity. It was not certainly so when we were graduating from the law schools. International law, as used to be oftensaid then a ‘vanishing point of jurisprudence’, has nowadays vastly changed in its scope and content.Even though domestic law influenced the early growth of international law, it is the other way round today. Parliaments andcourts take note of the developments in the international law in the legislative and adjudicative process. The imposingedifice, of international law now comprising thousands of bilateral and multilateral treaties and hundreds of decisions ofinternational tribunals has resulted in a gradual erosion of the traditional notion of sovereignty. A concomitant effect is theincreasing space created for individuals in the domain of international law. Now, it is not the state alone whose interests aretaken cognizance of by the international law, it is rather the individuals, the people and communities who are graduallycoming to the center in the policy formulation level at the international and regional level. Rather than considering the statea parens patrae, the ultimate owner of individual interest, it is now considered a trustee of individual and social interestsand an instrument of public good and distributive justice. Thanks especially to the human rights movements, in contrast towhat Oppenheim taught us, today we would hesitate to accept individual merely as an object of international law. No state,whether it is dualist or monist, can claim that it is not bound by the human rights dictates irrespective of whether they arestipulated in the soft law (such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights) or. hard law instruments (such as bilateral ormultilateral treaties) and do whatever it likes to its people. It is mainly because of the universal values that the internationallaw promotes values which are equally important for all the people of all the time. While the foreign policy of a country iscertainly guided by the principles of the UN Charter, non-alignment, the Panchsheel, international law and value of worldpeace (Art 26(15) of the Nepalese Constitution) we also expected that international law will be guided by the objective ofenhancing the dignity of the nation in the international arena by maintaining the sovereignty, integrity and independence ofthe country (e.g. Art 25 (5) of the Constitution of Nepal) Therefore, the role of international law and national law, in anutshell, is complementary and supplementary.The developments that have taken place in the domain of science and technology is another reason for the growth ofinternational law. Compared with how matters stood in the 1950s, activities in the outer space, expanding use of marineresources and mineral resources in deep sea along with a host of environmental issues such as the ozone layer depletion,global warming, the brown cloud in the South Asian sky have necessitated the birth of a legal regime which is beyond the--61--
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