No Peace Without Justice organises a high-level meeting on International Criminal Justice in Beirut on 11-13 March 2009

No Without Justice, in cooperation with Justice Without Frontiers, organises a high-level meeting on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Lebanon’s ratification of the Rome Statute, in Beirut on 11 March 2009. The purpose of the meeting, which will involve representatives from the Ministry of Defence, MPs, lawyers, judges, NGOs, the media and foreign diplomats, is to increase knowledge and advocacy capacity of the participants on ICC-related issues with a view to fostering support for Lebanon's ratification of the Rome Statute using the occasion presented by the Universal Ratification campaign promoted by the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) which sees Lebanon as the target for March 2009.

The high-level meeting will be followed by a two-day training for the media, co-organised by NPWJ and Justice Without Frontiers, to be held in Beirut on 12-13 March, with participation by representatives from nearly all of the Lebanese media (including television, newspapers and radio), from Al-Jazeera (English and Arabic) and from Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as representatives from all organs of the ICC and the CICC. The purpose of the training is to increase the capacity of journalists from the region to report on international criminal justice issues. The training will consist of an overview of the Rome Statute’s basic purposes and principles, with a focus on the crimes, the court’s jurisdiction and the protection of victims and witnesses. One concrete output foreseen from the training is the production of a brochure on the ICC and the media, to which the final session will be devoted.
 
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.