Synergy #33 Spring edition 2003 - European Law Students ...

In short, we accepted. There is however
slightly more to it than that!
The Beginning
The idea to create a legal research group on
the national implementation measures taken
by countries in light of the ICC’s Rome Statute
had been kicking around the “ELSA world”
for some time. ELSA’s previous legal research
group on the “Election of Judges to the ICC”
was so well received by NGO’s and academics
that the ELSA delegation to the Xth Prep
Com decided that now was the time to “Carpe
Diem”! The assembled team looked pretty
good, after all we had lots of ex prep comers,
the ex IB Director for Human Rights Connie
Schneider, Mr “Future Secretary General of
the UN”, Espen Nakstad, Matthias Goldmann
and Roberta Ferrario both of whom had worked
on the LRG on the election of judges, as well
as fresh talent in the form of Andreas Stomps
(soon to become International Marketing
Coordinator for PINIL) and Myriam Bouazdi
(the current HR Director of ELSA France and
now one of our Outreach Coordinators). After
lots of meetings with the NGO representatives
at the PrepCom, three nights of not
much sleep, a ridiculous amount of pizza and
many, many internal meetings in the basement
of the YMCA we managed to draft a project
outline for the LRG.
Amongst all the general mayhem of
the PrepCom we managed to get our
proposal printed and distributed it to
most of the NGO’s present as well as
some of the delegates. We also managed
to use this opportunity to get some
letters of support, from amongst other
Ben Ferencz (a well known face to all
those who have attended PrepComs).
And then came the summer holidays…
After having promised to do huge amounts
of work on the project over the summer
and stick to our highly ambitious and slightly
unrealistic timetable there was in fact
complete silence over our email list. Espen
did of course try to encourage us, however
in between writing emails from café’s in
Barcelona, attending the ELSA House
training week and doing two (yes that’s
14
Magazine of The European Law Students’ Association
Project on ICC
National
Implementation
Legislation
(PINIL)
Ann Swampillai
PINIL International coordinator
right for those of you who didn’t know!)
degrees he was fighting a losing battle.
So summer came and went and eventually
we all got back to our respective
countries, with suntans, lots of rolls of
undeveloped film and sand still stuck in
between our toes and it was only then our
LRG finally got moving!
ELSA House Meeting
It was decided, wisely in my opinion, that we
should all meet up again to try and get things
going. There was “so much to do and so little
time”! The question was then where to meet?
Ideally of course we would have liked to hold
the meeting in a beach hut on a little island in
the south pacific, but failing that, Brussels
seemed the obvious choice. We were however
a little worried about approaching the IB and
asking whether we could basically take over
the ELSA House for a weekend, however they
could not have been more welcoming and
accommodating. We even got to take over
the IB meeting room for the whole time we
were there, which I hear is a privilege usually
only accorded to visiting Heads of State and
minor royalty.
With all the arrangement made, on a very,
very cold night in Brussels I got off the Eurostar
and headed to the ELSA house; sure of the
incredible amount of work that lay ahead that
weekend, but unsure of how much real progress
we could actually make. I should also mention
that by this time our team had grown to include
Isabelle Walther (who now doubles as our web
diva and one half of the academic double act) as
well as Danielle Kurpershoek (One of our
International Fundraising Coordinators who also
mans our official office in the Hague).
Well to cut a LONG story short, we made
real progress! Matthias and Isabelle drafted the
academic outline, Andreas and Espen got started
on the marketing materials, Danielle and I
worked on the budget, Connie started work on
the content of the website, Myriam looked into
all matters relating to National Coordination of
the project, we all spent AGES deciding on what
to put in our “executive summary” and we had
a meeting with Irune from the Coalition for
the International Criminal Court. We also got
Your mission, should you choose
to accept it, is to form a new legal
research group which looks at the
ICC national implementation legislation.
This LRG should involve
all 38 ELSA Groups, have support
from a whole host of academics and
NGO’s, involve a researchers’
conference hosted in an as yet
undisclosed location and result in a
high quality publication which should
be internationally distributed.
This message will self destruct in five
seconds……
lots of helpful feedback during a meeting with
the IB who were very supportive of our
project. We even had the privilege of having
our budget looked over by the IB Treasurer
(thanks again Ivan!). At the end of the
weekend we all had our official titles assigned
and all the tasks were distributed; and what
had looked like “mission impossible” only a few
days ago was beginning to look more like,
“mission : could do this if we all work really
hard”.
What Happened Next…..
Well after Brussels things have moved pretty
fast, we have applied for funding (• 150,000
to be exact, so if you have any spare change
lying around….), the website is now up and
running, we have an official office in the Hague
courtesy of the Grotius Institute for
International Law, a group from the
International Coordinating Board attended the
International Criminal Law Network’s annual
meeting in the Hague and picked up more
letters of support and a new member of the
International Board (Gian Carlí Stäubli Fioroni
from Switzerland), Julia Vaas the IB’s Human
Rights Director has given the “thumbs up”
to our project, we have a package ready for
distribution to the network to publicise the call
for national coordinators for our project,
Roberta Ferrario is now an official Outreach
Coordinator and Liza Popova from Latvia was
recruited as a Outreach Coordinator for
Eastern Europe, and we have presented ELSA
PINIL at the German NCM and will hopefully
present PINIL at the ICM. Lastly, but of course
most importantly, our project has been
endorsed by Mr ELSA Online, Thomas Fraiss!
What more could we reasonably be ask for?
And Now………
Now we are looking for LOTS of enthusiastic
people to help with National Coordination of
our project as well as National Researchers!
I have purposefully not spoken too much
about the contents of the project here, as
there is simply too much to say! If you
would like to get involved or would simply
like to find out more then please visit our
website @ www.elsa-pinil.org.