On the 31st May 2010 representatives of the 111 governments who have signed the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) will gather in Kampala, Uganda, for its first review conference. The brief of the tribunal is to seek to try perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity worldwide.

On the eve of the conference UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon stated, “If the ICC is to have the reach it should possess, if it is to become an effective deterrent as well as an avenue of justice, it must have universal support . . . This is a fundamental break with history. The old era of impunity is over.” He noted how a new “age of accountability” that began with the special courts on war crimes and genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia was slowly coming into being, with the ICC as the keystone of a growing system of global justice that includes international tribunals, mixed international-national courts and domestic prosecutions.

The Secretary General then called on the additional 37 countries that have signed but not yet ratified the treaty to do so. Unfortunately, some of the world's largest and most powerful countries, including China, India, Russia and the United States, have not yet joined.

A month-long UN Conference produced a draft on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that reaffirms the resolve of the five Member States with nuclear weapons to eliminate their arsenals and called for a United Nations-sponsored conference in 2012 to establish a nuclear-free Middle East.

The Secretary General summarised the achievements of the conference by saying, “The agreement on concrete actions will advance all three pillars of the treaty – disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy.” He further, “. . . welcomed the firm commitment of the nuclear weapon states to advance their efforts to eliminate all nuclear weapons, [as well as their] strong commitment to prevent nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.”

-- The Africa Progress Panel has launched The Africa Progress Report: From Agenda to Action – Turning Resources into Results for People, which takes stock of Africa’s progress since 2005 and assesses future opportunities for the continent. For both French and English, see links: http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/report/
-- Amnesty International Report 2010: State of the World’s Human Rights, is readily available online (www.thereport.amnesty.org). It documents abuses in 159 countries citing how powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient. Further, the report describes how with millions of people pushed into poverty by the food, energy and financial crises, global events have shown the urgent need to tackle the abuses that affect poverty.
--The recently updated UN 2010 World Economic Situation and Prospects reports that the global economy is slowly rebounding from the worst of the recession but the recovery remains too anaemic to create enough jobs to replace those lost so far. The world’s developed economies are expected to collectively grow by only 1.9 per cent this year and 2.1 per cent in 2011. China and India are forecast to grow this year by 9.2 per cent and 7.9 per cent respectively, whereas the economy of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to enlarge by 4.7 per cent and the Caribbean region by only 2.1 per cent. Recovery is much more subdued in many economies in Latin America.” Unemployment rates, already at historic highs in many countries, are unlikely to budge. The number of jobless people worldwide rose by at least 34 million last year, and the number of working poor soared by 215 million as many people took lower-paid jobs. To access the report, see: http://www.un.org/esa/policy/wess/wesp2010files/wesp10update.pdf