On Thursday morning, informal consultations on the Review Mechanism resumed. As the resolution was mainly a technical rollover from last year, States were able to conclude negotiations today for the draft that will be adopted by the Assembly. More on the Review of the ICC and Rome Statute can be found here.

Next on the agenda was a dedicated plenary session on the topic of cooperation, entitled “New ways to improve cooperation regarding witness protection and respond effectively to the new challenges ahead.” The plenary session was divided into two segments: a high-level session on voluntary cooperation and a technical session on protection of witnesses.

The first high-level session consisted of a panel, which included opening remarks from ASP President Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, followed by remarks from ICC President Piotr Hofmański, Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang and Registrar Peter Lewis. The panel was followed by interventions from states parties, concluding with the signing of a voluntary cooperation agreement on sentence enforcement between the Court and the government of Spain.

The second session of the panel on cooperation focused on the technical aspects of witness protection. Members of the panel included Elisabeth Evenson, speaking on behalf of Human Rights Watch, as a civil society representative. The expected interventions from other states and civil society did not take place as presentations from the panel ran over the time allocated for this agenda item.

States focused on the closed informal consultations on the 2023 ICC budget proposal throughout the day.

Day 4 concluded with the launch of the International Criminal Court’s Strategy on Gender Equality and Workplace Culture.

Side events that took place on day 4 of ASP21 are:

• Continued genocide in the absence of justice and impunity in Kurdistan (hosted by Kurdish Organizations Network Coalition for the International Criminal Court)
   
• Equitable access to justice: The Case of Palestine (co-hosted by the State of Palestine, South Africa, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human rights (PCHR), Defence for the Children International –Palestine, Addameer –Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Amnesty International, INTLawyers, Open Society Foundation, the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam)
   
• Strengthening International Justice: Challenges and Opportunities in the Case of Ukraine (co-hosted by Media Initiative for Human Rights, Renaissance International Foundation, Truth Hounds, Ukraine 5AM Coalition, Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG) and Zmina Human Rights Center)
   
• Justice in Venezuela: Moving forward at the ICC and beyond (co-hosted by Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and RFK Human Rights)
   
• The Universality of the International Criminal Court: On the importance of ratifying the Rome Statute and its Amendments (co-hosted by Belgium, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Global Rights Compliance and Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA))
   
• Ratifying amendments to the Rome Statute (co-hosted by Belgium, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Global Rights Compliance)