LONDON -- Almost unnoticed by the world's media, a huge step forward in the pattern of global governance is about to be taken.
The vastly ambitious project, now on the verge of fruition, involves nothing less than the setting up of a permanent world court, with its own jurisdiction rising above all nations, its own judges, its own investigators and prosecutor and its own penalties. It is to be called the International Criminal Court and will be based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
The declared purpose of this revolutionary innovation is to bring to book the perpetrators of the world's most atrocious crimes, the instigators of genocide and the authors of crimes against humanity and all kinds of war crimes. It will be distinguished from the existing ad hoc tribunal that has been set up already to try war criminals from the Yugoslav horrors, or from the similar tribunal for the recent Rwandan butchery, in that this new court will be permanent. And its role will be quite different from that of the present International Court of Justice, which mostly adjudicates disputes between nations but does not arrest and try individuals.