ABSTRACT
The first achievement of global civil society with respect to the Statute for an International Criminal Court is that there should be such a Statute, and Court, at all. As discussed in Chapter 1, the idea was first invented in civil society, and was kept alive, developed and advocated in international legal associations for 125 years. Even a few years before the adoption of the Statute, CICC coordinator Bill Pace was told by a leading expert in international affairs to ‘“keep working on this, but don’t get your hopes up too high for it isn’t going to happen in your lifetime, or your children’s lifetime, or your grandchildren’s lifetime”’ (Pace, 1999: 193). Secretary-General Kofi Annan, too, emphasised in his ceremonial speech at the adoption of the Statute that it was ‘an achievement which, only a few years ago, nobody would have thought possible’ (Annan, 1998).
