The World Forum on Democracy, AI/Tec hand Humankind, organised in Berlin by the “Cinema for Peace” Foundation, set the stage for the launch of several political initiatives essential for safeguarding the world of the future: “The World Council on AI & Social Media;” “A Global Bill to Stop Fake News;” “The Israel/Palestine Council: Creating a Secular Palestinian State with the Rule of Law, Elections and Equality, Protecting Israel’s Existence and Ending Illegal Settlement and Civilian Casualties in Gaza;” “The Dissidents Council;” “The Council on Environment” and “The Crime of Denial of Democracy”.
Invited to speak at the Forum, the President of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization, Emeritus Professor Emil Constantinescu, took part in the inaugural workshop discussions surrounding the opportunity of establishing an International Permanent Court for the Crime of Aggression with the aim of enshrining the methods by which heads of state can be held accountable for war, as well as identifying ways of supporting the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.
The workshop afforded an opportunity for ample and fruitful discussions between heads of state, national ministers, leaders of international legal organisations, professors of law, activists and Supreme Court justices, moderated by Geoffrey Robertson KC, a world-renowned international human rights attorney and UN Appeals Court judge.
Attending the panel were Oleksandra Matviichuk (2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Head of the Centre for Civil Liberties); Albie Sachs (Anti-apartheid activist, expert on transitional justice, reconciliation, and accountability, who survived an assassination attempt by the South African apartheid regime; served as South African Constitutional Court Justice drafting post-apartheid constitution); Egils Levits (President of Latvia 2019-2023, former judge of the European Court of Justice 2004-2019); Yossi Beilin (Israeli Justice Minister 1999-2001; architect of the Oslo Accords); Margarita Šniutytė-Daugėlienė (Vice-President of Eurojust); David Akerson (Senior attorney at UN tribunals including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the UN Investigative Team for ISIS accountability), Biram Dah Abeid (Deputy of the National Assembly of Mauritania, President of Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement); Herta Däubler-Gmelin – (German Minister of Justice 1998-2002); Ruti Teitel (Professor of Comparative Law and a global authority on transitional justice; a scholar on international criminal law evolution and challenges of prosecuting sitting versus former heads of state); Tatyana Eatwell (UK barrister and international human rights lawyer); Stephen J. Rapp (Former US War Crimes Ambassador for Barack Obama 2009-2015; former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, securing genocide convictions); Achille Campagna (ICC-listed defence lawyer representing clients in Ukraine-related war crimes proceedings); Mark Stephens CBE (International human rights lawyer representing victims of state oppression); Andreas Paulus (Judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court); Reed Brody ("The Dictator Hunter" who led a 15-year campaign resulting in the arrest and conviction of Chadian dictator Hissène Habré (2016)-and advised victims pursuing Pinochet and Duvalier); Nadine Strossen (President of the American Civil Liberties Union 1991-2008); Dana L. Gold (Director of the Democracy Protection Initiative at the Government Accountability Project); Udo Jude Ilo (CEO of the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law) and Toni Vidan (Croatian environmental and democracy activist, member of the European Economic and Social Committee).
The participants debated various means by which the imprescriptible nature of the crime of aggression against another state, highlighting the unfortunate reality by which the International Criminal Court, established following the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda expressly in order to bring similar actions to court in the future, currently exerts reduced influence over the states that refuse to accept its authority. As a consequence, participants to the workshop evaluated a series of possible solutions to this issue, from a return to specialised international tribunals for each specific case in turn to applying economic sanctions against countries that refuse to accept the authority of the International Criminal Court on account of human rights violations.
In his intervention, President Emil Constantinescu highlighted that “we need a concerted conceptual effort to better define the responsibility of the head of state for starting and continuing a war of aggression. One positive result of these conceptual efforts has already been a better definition of the distinction between the concepts of ‘genocide,’ ‘crimes against humanity,’ ‘war crimes,’ and ‘crimes of aggression against a sovereign state.’”
