Director General Erkki Kourula elected as judge for the International Criminal Court
The statutes of the International Criminal Court have been ratified by 88 nations. There were 43 candidates in the election. Kourula was proposed by Finland, but he had the support of the Nordic countries from the beginning. Kourula received 56 votes in the ballot. Finland has been a prominent supporter of the court early on and its input in the founding negotiations in 1995-2002 were significant.
The International Criminal Court is the first permanent global criminal court. Its jurisdiction covers the world’s most heinous atrocities, such as mass murders, crimes against humanity and gross war crimes that have taken place after the ratification of the court’s statutes on 1 July, 2002. The court’s jurisdiction completes the juridisction of nation states. The court is located in the Hague, the Netherlands. For the court to be fully operational, a prosecutor will be named in April in a meeting by the nations that have ratified the statutes.
Kourula has worked for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs since 1984 specialising in international law. Prior to his appointment as Director General for Legal Affairs, he was the Finnish Amabassador to the Council of Europe, Minister Counsellor and Legal Advisor at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations, and held various posts at the Legal Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Kourula was actively involved in the negotiations to establish the International Criminal Court as head of the Finnish delegation. While at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the UN, he was able to monitor the founding of the international tribunals to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Erkki Kourula is a Doctor of Philosophy in International Law at the University of Oxford . Prior to his career in foreign office, he held various research posts in the fields of international, constitutional and administrative law at the University of Helsinki, University of Oxford, Academy of Finland and the United Nations in Geneva. He was also a Professor of International Law at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi.
Further information: Marja Lehto, Head of the Unit for Public International Law, tel: 09 160 55726, gsm: 040 511 8489, and as of 10 February: Erkki Kourula, Director General , tel: 09 160 55700, and Sari Mäkelä, Legal Counsellor, tel: 09 160 55588.