Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will take steps with his international counterparts to accelerate the pace at which international courts work.

International courts whether criminal (e.g. the International Criminal Court [ICC]) or dealing with matters of general international law (e.g. in the International Court of Justice), deal with some of the most complex matters of international law. In the former, evidence gathering is often a difficult and painstaking process especially if evidence and witnesses are in a conflict zone and suspects are not in custody. However, once trials start, on average they take no longer than domestic trials of similar complexity. As a State Party to the Rome Statute and an initiator of the Independent Expert Review of the ICC, the UK has supported efforts to make the ICC more effective and efficient. In other international courts, where judgments may impact on states beyond the parties in the dispute, judges are often required to hear considerable numbers of arguments before coming to a judgment. Such judgments may affect matters of global governance, treaty interpretation as well as developing international jurisprudence.