David Tolbert, senior legal advisor to the registry of the ad hoc tribunal, said there were three issues linking the ex-Yugoslavia court and the ICC: the vindication of victims, the role of victims in trials and reparations. Setting up a reliable process of prosecution, allowing victims to confront offenders and giving the Court the power to award reparations would make for a permanent  tribunal that really works for victims, he explained.

Tolbert was among several speakers at a discussion on 'Memory and Impunity: from Nuremberg to a Permanent ICC' held Thursday night and organised by the interntional human rights and conflict prevention training centre FORMIN.

For his part, ICC conference president Giovanni Corso, also head of the Italian delegation, said: "We must keep victims' memories alive, if we are to prevent the occurrence of heinous crimes in the future. There must be no silence and no forgetfulness - these create an environment in which human rights violations flourish."

"The future ICC is the logical conclusion of a course of historical and political events...History is being made in these give weeks in an incredible and sustained effort by many people that is being lamentably ignored by the press," he said.

"A criminal trial will allow victims to tell their story and for human rights violators to be tried and if appropriate, convicted," he said.

"Although tremendous logistical and practical problems are involved, it is vital that victims have direct contact with the court," Tolbert said.

He said it was hard to stress enough the enormous difficulties victims, especially victims of sexual violence, face in confronting perpetrators. "The ICC needs to realise that a lot of resources need to be made available to ensure victims can testify in the best possible conditions.

Many of the victims giving evidence are frequently putting their lives on the line and face harassment and worse then they return home," Tolbert said.

The ITCY holds lessons for the ICC, he observed. The ICTY, created in 1994, had problems both in obtaining adequate funding and over the problem of state non-cooperation.   However, "The situation has changed greatly over the last year and we have almost half of a total of 60 suspects.

Although a number of big fish are not yet in custody, victims are travelling regularly to the Hague from the US and other parts of the world and rendering their testimonies, " Tolbert explained. The ITCY's witness protection programme ensures assistance to victims from their journey to the Hague through the trial. "It provides for family members to travel with victims to give them emotional support in the trauma they can face in being uprooted from homes that they had previously never left and undertaking long journey, testifying and staying in a strange country," he said.

Placing a victims unit under the direct authority of the court's Registry, and concealing their identity during trials by blacking out their faces and "other methods" were very important tools in their protection, he added.

"There is an inherent tension in the trial process between a victim's right to protection and the right of the accused to know the identity of their accuser," Tolbert said, explaining that the court's resettlement programme took care of victims for whom it would be unsafe to return home.

But the ITCY howeber does not have the power to award reparations, an issue that Tolbert said he hoped the Rome delegates will make sure exists for the ICC. "The ITCY statute doesn't really provide for financial and other forms of compensation, i.e. provisions for rehabilitation and apology," he noted.

"The experience of the ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals show that we need the protection of witnesses and reparations to end the cycle of impunity," Tolbert said. Alison Dickens