The International Criminal Court (ICC) president will visit Colombia to sign an agreement with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos over the enforcement of ICC sentences, according to an ICC press release.
ICC President Sang-Hyun Song will commence his two-day visit to the Colombian capital Bogota on Tuesday, May 17, whereby Colombia will become the first country in the Latin American and Caribbean region to sign such an accord over the enforcement of ICC sentences.
Aside from the head of state, the ICC president is due to meet several other high-ranking government officials, as well as the presidents of both Colombia’s Supreme Court and Consitutional Court.
President Sang-Hyun Song is seeking to raise global awareness about the ICC and will give a lecture at the University de los Andes to stress that the ICC is a last resort and it is up to sovereign states to ensure that criminal accountability is achieved.
The court president was invited by Santos during a United Nations meeting in New York this past December.
The Office of the Prosecutor, meanwhile, an independent organ of the ICC, is simultaneously conducting investigations in Colombia with the remit of assessing whether genuine national proceedings are being carried out.
The ICC is in charge of working to end impunity for perpetrators of the most serious crimes of international concern, basing its operations on the 1998 Rome Statute.