No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), as the Interim JRR Secretariat, organised the Fourth Justice Rapid Response (JRR) Policy Group Meeting in the margins of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The event was co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of Canada and Belgium to the United Nations, with the financial support of Canada, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The JRR Policy Group, which is currently composed of 48 States from all regions of the world and 20 inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations, is chaired by Canada.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss recent developments in the Justice Rapid Response as well as the program of work for 2011, including JRR’s deployments, training activities and outreach activities. It also provided an opportunity to discuss the preparations for the Third JRR Training Course to be held in Doha, Qatar from 21 to 30 January 2011, whose purpose is to certify to the JRR roster a new pool of experts who could be deployed on a JRR mission and to enhance further the engagement of the Middle East in this initiative.
Those present at the meeting included the Hon Emma Bonino, Vice President of the Italian Senate and founder of NPWJ, who commended JRR’s achievements, including the successful completion of three deployments and the continuing development of the JRR roster, which now counts 80 experts. She highlighted that initiatives like JRR are of critical importance to strengthening the international criminal justice system and encouraged all States to participate. Other speakers also expressed their support for JRR and encouraged States and international organisations to nominate experts for participation in the Third JRR Training course.
Justice Rapid Response is a multilateral stand-by facility that can rapidly deploy active-duty criminal justice and related professionals at the request of a State or international institution in situations where human rights or international criminal law violations may have occurred. JRR experts can deploy quickly to identify, collect and preserve especially the most perishable information, analyse the information and report back to the requesting authority with recommendations as to the most appropriate justice remedies under the circumstance.
JRR thus makes it possible for the international community to provide much needed support for compliance with and the effective enforcement of international criminal justice, helping to make justice an integral and constructive part of conflict resolution and post-conflict peace-building.
For further information, contact Alison Smith on asmith@npwj.org or +32-486-986 235 or Nicola Giovannini on ngiovannini@npwj.org or +32-2-548-3913.
