Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says the most important principle in international justice today, is equality. Speaking at the launch of the Institute for Global Justice in The Hague, Albright said, “we are all the same” and people have the right to justice.

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By Geraldine Coughlan and Eerke Steller

Madeleine Albright, who is a member of the Institute's Advisory Council, told IJT that because the Institute will be a multi-faceted centre of expertise dealing with a range of issues including property, labour and energy law - it will mean legal empowerment for the poor.

To what extent do you think that global justice reaches beyond international tribunals?
There are various parts to global justice and one of the reasons I am very glad this institute has been set up is that it is going to be looking at much wider purviews in term of various themes that have been set up that go beyond tribunals. You try to establish legal norms that are not just from one part of the world. This is a new way of linking a lot of aspects and being interdisciplinary. So yes I do think global justice goes beyond international tribunals.

Do you think the US will join the ICC?
I have always believed in the legitimacy of the ICJ, created at the same time as the UN and it has played a huge role in the development of international law. The ICC has been an issue of some discussion in the US and I speak for myself. I always believed that it would have been important for the US to be a friend of the court. That was my recommendation as we were leaving office. There are a many number of reasons why the US did not ratify. What is interesting is that the ICC is getting greater and greater legitimacy as a result of some of the work that it has been doing and the US has supported it in terms of Sudan and in looking at Gadaffi. The US is increasingly recognising the existence of the ICC and the work that it has been doing.

The ICTY was set up under Chapter VII, intended to bring peace and as a deterrent. It does not seem to have done so. Do international courts serve as a deterrent?
My personal opinion is yes. What has been happening in the former Yugoslavia becomes more and more, proof of the theory that it does take a while. It is a big step forward that Milosevic was here and now Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are here. The ICTY is one of the important tools. The international judicial systems and the threats of indictment, arrest and trial, work on some, though not on everybody.

But I do think the ICTY is a legitimate deterrent to a number of cases. As the trials go forward, this becomes even clearer. Also there is the court in Arusha. And what is interesting is the evolution.

Nothing had happened after Nuremberg. And Nuremburg was a very different set of trials. One of my first tasks when I got to the UN was to help create the war crimes tribunals.

And it was a big issue whether they would work. There were a lot of doubts about it. But now there is a systematic proof that they have worked. And to some extent the ICC grew out of the idea that there could be a way that those people who were involved in crimes against humanity and genocide would be brought to justice.

It took a very long time to ratify the genocide convention. It’s a slow process but I think on the whole it is justified.

What is so fascinating about the doctrine of protecting civilians?
What’s fascinating about it is that we have gone through various periods where we did not worry enough about what was going on inside countries. That there have been wars between countries and all of a sudden we do know what is going on, where civilians become not collateral damage, but one of the reasons terrible things happen in countries. People are trying now to figure out, for humanitarian reasons, how to protect civilians.

What do you think is the most important principle in international justice today?
It is the fact that we are all the same and that people, no matter where they live, are entitled to have their views heard and to have justice for the causes that they think they have been wronged about.

Lead photo - Angela n. on flickr.com - all further use subject to this CC licence