The Arab Coalition welcomes the Yemeni parliament’s ratification of the Rome Statute and urges it to make the legislative changes necessary to bring domestic laws in line with the Statute

The Arab Coalition for an International Criminal Court (ACICC) receives with great pleasure the news that Yemen has ratified the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute. ACICC regards this as a positive step towards realising criminal justice, protecting human rights and ending the escape from punishment.

The Yemeni parliament approved the International Criminal Court’s statute in a session convened on Saturday 24^th March 2007. Four Arab States are now members of the ICC: Jordan, Djibouti, the Comoros Islands and Yemen. Thirteen States have signed the founding statute: Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Djibouti, the Comoros Islands, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen.

ACICC believes that in order for the ratification to constitute a positive step, swift legislative changes must be made to domestic laws in order to bring them in line with the International Criminal Court’s founding statute.

While ACICC welcomes this step, it urges other Arab States to become members of the permanent International Criminal Court in its capacity as a tool for allowing international criminal justice to become entrenched and for protecting human rights.