Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

Goal: The overall goal was to ensure that gender-based violence (GBV) linked to
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes were fully recognized as an
international crime before the ICC.
Activities:
1 st phase: Caucus members attended the three preparatory conferences and the Rome
Conference (1998), to lobby the negotiators. The focus was to get gender-based crimes
recognized as core crimes in the Statute. Activities included raising awareness on
gender issues among the State delegates negotiating the draft Statutes, and among
representatives of international human rights NGOs who also conducted ICC-related
advocacy. Daily press conferences were held.
2 nd phase: The Caucus, which had grown to a large coalition of individuals and
women’s rights groups from around the world, regrouped in 1999 to participate in the
negotiation of the supporting documents to the ICC Statute, i.e. the Elements Annex and
the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Like in the first phase, it produced expert legal
papers on the gender issues under discussion in recent jurisprudence from Rwanda and
Yugoslavia, and ran intensive advocacy during the post-Rome Conference ICC
preparatory commission meetings in New York.
3 rd phase: Drawing on its world-wide network, the Caucus advocated for the
appointment of qualified women candidates to be elected as ICC judges, and checked
candidates’ backgrounds for their views or decisions on human rights and women’s
rights issues. They found flaws in the background of a Fiji candidate, whose candidature
was withdrawn after successful protests by Fiji-based allies of the Women’s Caucus.
The national efforts of the allies were backed by the Women’s Caucus circulation of a
dossier on the candidate to all State Parties involved.
In all the three phases, legal experts based at the New York office provided on-going
well-researched legal input to the entire process. When State delegates took positions
that were against the campaign goals, the Women’s Caucus contacted network
members based in the countries concerned, leading to local advocacy meetings and
public mobilization campaigns to increase pressure on decision-makers to change their
position.
Achievements:
84
Campaigns December 2011