Ode to ANR's genius

The editor, Sir:

I write not only to correct a mistake in your editorial of April 14, 2014 on A.N.R. Robinson's global legacy, but also, because of the intimate connection I had with one area of international affairs impacted by A.N.R.'s genius, to complement the praise you have showered on this giant of a Caribbean man from little Tobago.

Let me first clarify that (and I am grateful to Bruce Golding for the correction in The Gleaner of April 15, 2014) the judicial body of which I have been a judge since 1998, and its president from 2008-2011, is the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the first war-crime tribunal to be established after the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.

Although the idea of an international criminal court or jurisdiction was raised as far back as the period after World War I, the modern genesis of the topic was a proposal made in 1989 by Trinidad and Tobago at the General Assembly of the United Nations. This proposal, which was co-sponsored by the Caribbean countries, called for the establishment of an international criminal body with jurisdiction to try individuals and entities engaged in illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs across international frontiers as well as other international criminal activities.

The proposal was the initiative of the eminent Caribbean statesman, A.N.R. Robinson, who was at that time the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. The item was referred to the International Law Commission. I was then Jamaica's representative to the Sixth Legal Committee of the United Nations. When I was elected to the International Law Commission in 1991, Ambassador Marjorie Thorpe of Trinidad and Tobago asked me to keep a watchful eye on the drafting of a statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the Commission. To that end, I made sure that I was a member of the working group entrusted with that task, which was completed in a relatively short time.

When the item was introduced in 1989 by Trinidad and Tobago, the reception in the Sixth Committee and the General Assembly was lukewarm. But when the Yugoslavia conflict broke out in 1991, the Europeans came aboard and pressed for the establishment of an international criminal court.

trying serious violations

In the result, the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was adopted in 1993, establishing the tribunal to try the most serious violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia; that statute and the Tribunal's work influenced the adoption of the 1998 Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.

It is significant that since the inception of the court, three Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been judges of the ICC.

As a proud Caribbean national, whenever it is appropriate, I seize the opportunity to highlight the seminal role that a distinguished Caribbean national and a small country played in initiating the process that led to work on an international criminal jurisdiction, and, ultimately, to the establishment of the ICC.

It is a role that is not widely known, and among those who are aware of it, not sufficiently acknowledged.

PATRICK ROBINSON