ICC President Judge Fernández de Gurmendi receives the Global Jurist of the Year 2017 Award.
On 14 February 2018, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, President of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or the “Court”), was awarded the Global Jurist of the Year 2017 Award by the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights (CIHR) at a ceremony held in The Hague, Netherlands. The award is given annually to honour a sitting judge, whether in an international or national court, who has demonstrated in his or her career courage in the face of adversity to uphold and defend fundamental human rights or the principles of international criminal justice.
Presenting the award to Judge Fernández, Ambassador David Scheffer, Director of CIHR, stated: “her jurisprudence […] has confirmed her insightful and prescient mind in the realm of international criminal law. I see in her jurisprudence the seasoned deliberation of one of the framers of the Rome Statute and its Rules of Procedure and Evidence.” He also said: “Judge Fernández has played a critical role in speeding up the proceedings while still protecting the rights of the accused. Under her leadership as president, the Court has significantly improved the efficiency and timelines of its trial work. That is critical in garnering political support for the ICC today and in the future.”
In her acceptance speech, President Fernández expressed her gratitude for the award and discussed some of the key challenges the ICC faces today, stating: “The International Criminal Court was created in the 1990s, when idealism was as it peak. Now it needs to develop in a less benign world where there is a serious push back against global values, and nationalism and intolerance are on the rise. We will need all the stubborn optimism of the Rome generation in the more turbulent years to come. The Court is mature enough to survive but survival is not enough – it needs to maintain membership, grow and thrive.”
——————–
Previous recipients of the Global Jurist Award include Justice Dikgang Moseneke of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (2013), Justice Shireen Avis Fisher of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (2014), Judge Gloria Patricia Porras Escobar of the Constitutional Court of Guatemala (2015), and Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada (2016).
