The Women's Caucus, a brief description:

The Women's Caucus grew out of the work of a last minute organizing effort of a small group of women human rights activists at the February 1997 Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of an International Criminal Court at the U.N. These women realized that without an organized caucus, women's concerns would not be actively defended by the mainstream Human Rights NGOs or the NGO coalition monitoring the proceedings for the establishment of the ICC (the CICC), although it must be recognized that the latter played an important role in the creation of the caucus.

Building on the work of previous caucuses formed around the Vienna, Cairo and Beijing Conferences, and due to the success of this ad hoc caucus in integrating a gender perspective, in brackets, into the definition of crimes against humanity and war crimes, these women decided to form a permanent caucus which would be part of the CICC but autonomous in its function.

The Goal of the Caucus:

The Caucus tried to get women to become involved from every region of the globe including the developed world. As the Caucus grew and became more structured, three main goals were identified by the more than 300 organizations from around the globe which supported its work. These were:

1) To ensure a worldwide participation of women's human rights advocates in the negotiations of the ICC treaty to lobby for an effective and independent court

2) To take advantage of this opportunity to educate governments delegations and mainstream Human Rights NGOs on their commitments to women and the need to integrate a gender perspective into the U.N.

3) To use this historical event as a means for popular education on women's human rights and raise public awareness of the horrific nature of crimes committed against women

Along with our focus on women's concerns, the Caucus consistently made our views known on issues which are generally not recognized as gendered, such as jurisdiction, independence of the prosecutor, complementarity, cooperation, financing, etc. Nevertheless, due to our limited human and financial resources and because nobody else was doing it, we had to prioritize those issues which were more directly of concern to women in our position papers, in our lobbying efforts as well as in choosing our core principles.

Despite financial and other limitations, we significantly accomplished our three main goals and we were quite successful with regards to our core principles with the exception of the sixth one relating to the independence, integrity and credibility of the Court. In fact, we have been perceived as being one of the most successful caucuses and we have received many congratulations from around the world.

Monitoring Optional Protocol to the CEDAW

Because of the success of the ICC initiative, the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice in the ICC includes the monitoring negotiations of an 'Optional Protocol' to the Convention of Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) within its mandate as both these initiatives broaden the accountability mechanisms available to women. The CEDAW, often called the International Bill of Rights for Women, does not establish an international procedure for considering complaints about violations. The United Nations is now engaged in drafting an "optional protocol" to the Convention which would create such a procedure. The Caucus therefore changes its name to Women's Caucus for Gender Justice to reflect the broader mandate.

The Women's Caucus, as part of the future activities, aims to intervene in the two important processes at the United Nations which forms a part of a spectrum of international recourse procedures that will be made available to women. Firstly, the Caucus seeks to continue working on the next phase of the ICC process of drafting the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Elements of Crimes in the four preparatory committee meetings scheduled in 1999 and early 2000. Such an intervention is important to ensure that the recognition accorded to crimes against women and its prosecution is not undermined by rules of procedures and evidence which are not gender sensitive and does not take into account the special circumstances around crimes of gender and sexual violence. The Caucus also aims to work for speedy implementation of the ICC statute and therefore participate in a ratification campaign to achieve the minimum number of ratification necessary for the statute to come into force. Additionally, we hot to enhance the involvement of more women (particularly from the South) in this process and in the development of advocacy and education work in their respective countries.