The states party to the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes court, will come together in The Hague from Monday to discuss the 2005 budget in the face of strong US opposition to the court.
"The budget for 2005 will be critical as the court is moving into an operational phase" with the launch of its two first investigations in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Medard Rwelamira, a spokesman for the assembly of states parties.
Based in The Hague, the ICC became a legal reality in July 2002 and is mandated to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after the court was established. The court will focus on those most responsible for such crimes only if their national states cannot or will not act.
This year chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo launched two official probes into alleged war crimes, in northern Uganda and the DR Congo.
Teams of ICC investigators have already been to the two regions and will step up their work in the coming months interviewing witnesses and survivors and gathering evidence.
As the ICC moves from being a legal institution under construction to an operational court with investigations ongoing human rights organisations are urging the states parties to step up their support for the court.
The states have proposed a budget of 70 million euros for the year 2005 set off against a budget of 61 euros in 2003. To compare, the United Nations court for the former Yugoslavia has an annual budget of 130 million dollars (107 million euros).
It is not so much the bulk sum of the budget but the distribution of the money that is likely to lead to heated debate in The Hague.
The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), an umbrella organisation of some 2,000 human rights organisations, has rejected the current budget proposals saying that they do not adequately ensure the protection of witnesses or allow victims to participate in the legal procedures.
"There is no money for a field office but you need that for the protection of witnesses and to help victims to be legally represented at the court," Jeanne Sulzer of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
The assembly of the states parties, which will last until Friday, is taking place in the light of non-relenting fierce US opposition against the ICC.
Richard Dicker of the New York-based Human Rights Watch denounced the US stance as an "ideological jihad (holy war)".
"One would think that with all that the US has to do with Iraq and terrorism that the effort to work against ICC has fallen off the agenda. The US has not relented nor slowed down its effort against the court," said the director of Human Rights Watch's international justice program.
The Bush administration objects to the ICC claiming it may interfere with global peacekeeping obligations and could be politicised. To this date Washington has signed some 90 bilateral agreements with countries that guarantee that US soldiers cannot be extradited to The Hague if they are prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
Of the 94 states that have ratified the treaty creating the ICC, around thirty have signed such bilateral agreements with Washington.
In June the US tried but failed get the United Nations to renew a clause giving US citizens that serve in UN peacekeeping missions immunity from the ICC.
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