​New ICC President Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi (Argentina) ©ICC-CPI​

Something happened last week that almost seems to have slipped by unnoticed: the International Criminal Court (ICC) has become the first international court entirely headed up by women. On Tuesday March 11, just days after International Women’s Day, the judges of the ICC elected from among their midst the court’s first female President, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi from Argentina. Not only that, but she is joined by two women in the rest of the presidency; is Judge Joyce Aluoch from Kenya has been elected First Vice President, and Judge Kuniko Ozaki from Japan has been elected Second Vice President. And since 2012 Fatou Bensouda, from the Gambia, has held the office of Chief Prosecutor, meaning that now all the leading positions of the court are held by women.

Women have presided over international courts before; Gabrielle Kirk McDonald was the first woman to preside over an international criminal tribunal at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), Navi Pillay presided over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Dame Rosalyn Higgins presided over the International Court of Justice from 2006 to 2009. However there have never been this many women in the top positions of an international court. At one point the ICTY had women presiding (Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald), as Chief Prosecutor (Louise Arbour) and as Registrar (Dorothee de Sampayo Garrido-Nijgh), however it has always had a vast majority of men on the benches.

The importance of having women in these leading positions is evidenced by the fact that some issues to do with gender violence have only come to the forefront in decisions influenced by women such as Navi Pillay, later judge at the ICC (under whose inspirational guidance I was privileged to spend some time as an intern) and recently retired UN Human Rights Commissioner. During her time at the ICTR, it was the attention she paid to evidence being presented about acts of sexual violence targeting Tutsi women, that led to the inclusion of rape as an act of genocide in the well-known Akayesu judgement. She has stated that she recognised the evidence as representing something more serious and specific than the way in which it was characterised by the prosecutors.

Indeed, this International Women’s Day the ICC pubished a press release reaffirming “its commitment to accountability for perpetrators of sexual and gender-based crimes.”

However there was no celebration nor even mention of this important, perhaps historical election of an all-female presidency in the ICC’s own press release naming Judge Fernández de Gurmendi as the new President. The fact that it has also gone unnoticed in the media is disappointing. The only media statement I could find highlighting this was from the Hirondelle News Agency, based in Arusha, Rwanda and focusing on issues of international justice. Continue reading →