Features

June 11, 2008

Handbook: Administration of International Courts

 

The ICTJ is pleased to offer a first-of-its-kind handbook for practitioners and policy makers involved with internationally assisted criminal courts, by Robin Vincent, Registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Mr. Vincent's work in international criminal justice has included serving temporarily as deputy registrar at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, advising on the establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, providing advice to the US Regime Crimes Liaison Office on the functioning of the Iraqi High Tribunal, and advising the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on issues of operational efficiency.

In 2002, Mr Vincent was appointed registrar of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he was responsible for all aspects of the court's administration from its establishment until his departure in 2005. He now is the registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, in The Hague.

Mr. Vincent spoke to the ICTJ about his work as a court registrar and about the new administrative practices manual.

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Let's begin with the basics: What is a court registrar?

The registrar is the court's senior administrator. Prior to my appointment to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, every registrar of an international court or tribunal had been a lawyer - but I'm not a lawyer. I'm pleased to say it has now been recognized that the job is 95 percent administrative.

What special challenges do international tribunals pose?

It is, first, money. The Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon are both funded by voluntary contributions, so the major challenge for a registrar is cash-flow - having sufficient money to carry out your mandate effectively.

Then it's recognition. I'm thinking, for example, of the Special Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. They are backed by the UN, but they may not be supported by perhaps half the UN membership. These courts have to rely on good will from the states.

So it's money and recognition. And also winning the hearts and minds of a skeptical population. So outreach is important.

Why does a tribunal need outreach?

We sometimes have a misconception or misunderstanding of who the stakeholders are. The first stakeholder is the society for whom the court is being set up. Sierra Leone is the classic example. You have a savage war, a traumatized society, a country that is firmly at the bottom of the UN table in terms of measures involving infant mortality, literacy, gross national product and so on - and then you have this spaceship phenomenon: In a country where people are not sure each day if they will have food to feed their families, a court is suddenly dropped in, and people arrive driving 4x4s.

You need to explain in pretty simple and robust terms why the court is there. Outreach isn't to persuade people to be on your side but to give them the facts, so that they can make up their own mind, to support this or not. It's a small brick in the rebuilding of their country.

Another aspect is that they need to understand the mechanics of the court. The biggest difficulty is to explain the role of the defense. The strongest feeling people many have is the desire for revenge - for women who have been raped, children who have been killed.

What form did outreach take in Sierra Leone?

I was fortunate in a way. I had only been in Freetown for two weeks when there was an event that brought together a number of Sierra Leoneans, ex-combatants as well as victims. As I was waiting to be introduced as registrar, I looked around, and the prosecutor was there with part of his team - all Americans, all white. I saw the British hosts, representing a country that has a colonial background - all white. I looked at one of the TRC commissions- white. I recall that there was one black Sierra Leonean on the front table platform. It suddenly came to me that almost unconsciously there is a kind of arrogance in the international community that says, "We're here. Here's what we're going to do to you."

I realized what we should be doing was asking what they expected of us.

It was a long process. My approach changed, so that I would say, "This is what we have to offer." Over the next two years we pulled together, finally, a kind of mandate that reflected the expectations of the civil society, at least so far as the court could be expected to achieve or influence.

Administrators presumably also face special logistical problems.

It's likely that very few court administrators in developed countries have had to start a court from nothing, from scratch. In my case, I had worked within a reasonably sophisticated organization for 40 years. Then I found myself with no courtroom, no offices, no staff - all the things you take for granted.

One of the major challenges is handling diversity. In Sierra Leone, over 60 percent of my staff was Sierra Leoneans. You find yourself assembling a staff from 30 or 40 nationalities. It is a challenge you wouldn't normally get in the States or the UK or elsewhere. Handling the cultural differences and also remembering that a large part of your organization has just emerged from a very traumatizing time is very important.

It sounds as relationships among the court officers are a key ingredient in a court's success or failure.

You can have the most perfect organization structurally, but it's only when you populate it with people and different, frequently challenging personalities that the thing starts to crumble.

It's important that people understand what their role is. All the roles - from the most senior to the most junior -are important. I've made the point in the manual that what must not happen is that it becomes some sort of beauty contest.

I of course understand that the defense and prosecution are not going to go on holiday together, but they must be professional. Of course the judges will say, "We are the most important people in this institution." They frequently have the most onerous decisions to make. But the judges also have to understand that they will only be able to handle those decisions if there is in fact an effective working environment, a preparedness to listen, to communicate within the institution, to value and respect other people's ideas and views.

It sounds very simple. But it can so easily go wrong if people take themselves too seriously.

I've seen prosecutors and judges and in some cases, sadly, registrars, just tear themselves apart. There have been very public shows of dislike or conflict, and that does nothing for people inside the institution, and certainly does nothing for the institution in terms of its reputation.

You are now helping set up the Special Court for Lebanon, in The Hague. Can that court build on the experience gained in Sierra Leone?

It's the difference between chalk and cheese in many respects, but there are some similarities in terms of challenges. For example, the funding of the Lebanon Tribunal is basically voluntary contributions, though 49 percent will come from the government of Lebanon. I still have the problem of voluntary contributions, I still face perhaps the problems of recruiting staff. But I don't have the problem of getting my communications working or building a court complex.

I do, however, still have an outreach problem in the sense that the Tribunal is distant geographically from the scene of the events under consideration, which can make interaction with civil society difficult. Ideally, I would like to be going to Beirut to start the court. But I'm not a security expert, and I do what I do with that I'm given. I'm told it would be unrealistic to establish a tribunal there.

A number of the things I would have given anything for in Sierra Leone, I know I have in plentiful supply in The Hague. But in Sierra Leone, I had the advantage of having the locals - the people of the country - at my door.

What is the working relationship between the registrar and the other officers of the court?

It's the registrar's job to allow the skills of the other organs of the court - the judges, the prosecution and the defense - to flourish. The best analogy I can use is a theater. For the administrative director, it's his or her job to make sure the building has a fire certificate, that there is sufficient space, that the toilets work, that the show is advertised, to see to the hiring of the usherettes and ushers, to employ the sales staff, to see to the bars - everything about that building that will attract a large audience.

When the actors come onto the stage - the prosecutors, the judges and the defense - and they play out the show in front an audience, frequently a critical audience - if any one of those actors forget their lines, or don't deliver their lines, or fall below the fairly high expectations that the audience has, there's nothing the registrar can do about it.

My challenge is very different from that of the other actors. I have to have a fairly good understanding of what their needs are. All I'm doing is making sure that when that first hearing starts, everything is in place. The carafes of water are there, the robes are of the right size - all of that boring stuff. And when that first night closes to a standing ovation, you will never see the administrator on stage linking hands with the actors and taking a bow.

And this administrator has no desire to do so. The satisfaction is hearing and seeing that ovation.

Photos (top): Robin Vincent discusses his work with Caitlin Reiger, Deputy Director of the ICTJ's Prosecutions Program. Photo by Nisma Zaman/ICTJ.