A panel of experts led by a former war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday began discussing where and how to store millions of pages of evidence and thousands of hours of courtroom video in the archives of UN courts prosecuting atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Both tribunals are under pressure from the UN Security Council to wrap up their work by 2010. They have begun looking at how best to preserve their archives and make them accessible to victims and survivors of the wars whose horrors led to the tribunals' establishment.
The panel's work "is crucial for the preservation of the legacy of the two tribunals and for the victims, as well as for the future for international criminal justice," said its leader, Richard Goldstone, a former prosecutor at both the Yugoslav and Rwandan courts.
"The tribunals' archives are a unique and invaluable resource for the peoples of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations and the international community," the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said in a statement.
The archives not only can be a resource for future prosecutions, they establish a record "as well as contribute to peace and reconciliation in the regions," it said.
The Yugoslav tribunal has indicted 161 people and completed cases against 108 of them. In Rwanda, 27 cases have been completed out of more than 80, while 35 are either being tried or awaiting appeal decisions.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS