Toespraak minister Verhagen voor Permanent Hof van Arbitrage
Gelegenheid:Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning. I’d like to welcome you all to this meeting, in particular those of you who have come a long way, and those of you who are here for the first time, as new members of the Court.
I regret that I will have to leave the meeting early for a trip abroad. Before doing so, I would like to touch on several items on the agenda.
To begin with, I would like to take a moment to reflect on how the Permanent Court has evolved over the past ten years. There is a saying common to both of the Court’s official languages, English and French: numbers don’t lie. The PCA has clearly grown in recent years. In 1999, when the Court celebrated its centenary, its budget was just under €900,000. Today it is nearly twice that: almost €1.8 million. Roughly half that amount, as you know, comes from income generated by the Court itself, chiefly through its work facilitating dispute resolution proceedings. This is unusual for an international organisation.
The Court’s spectacular growth is also illustrated by the increase in the number of cases and in the number of members. Around the year 2000 the PCA had just one case pending. Today it has 23. Over the past decade the number of member states rose from 89 to 107. The new member states are from all over the world. In addition to several Eastern European countries, a number of African states have acceded, most recently Benin and Kenya. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have acceded too, as have Malaysia and Korea. From Latin America, Belize and Costa Rica are now members. The latter has concluded one of the four host country agreements, which underscore the global nature of the Court by making it possible to conduct cases virtually, elsewhere in the world. Over the past decade, the Court has developed into a key player in the field of peaceful dispute resolution, contributing to The Hague’s identity as the legal capital o f the world.
The Financial Assistance Fund is item 5 on the agenda. This Fund aims to help developing countries meet part of the costs involved in international arbitration or other means of dispute settlement offered by the PCA. Because of this, the Fund has the capacity to play a central role in conflict prevention between countries. The current balance of over €150,000 is, however, insufficient to induce qualifying states to consider arbitration as a realistic alternative to judicial settlement of a dispute to which they might be party. The Secretary-General has therefore approached potential donor countries with the object of achieving, over a period of four years, a level of €2 million.
It is my pleasure to announce that the Netherlands will be contributing € 175,000 to the Financial Assistance Fund in 2008. These funds are from central peacebuilding resources in the development cooperation budget and, as such, are intended to help the Court expand its capacities in the field of conflict prevention in developing countries.
In addition, the Netherlands is setting aside €25,000 over and above the regular budget to promote the availability of the Fund in fragile states.
The Netherlands is also prepared to earmark the same amount in 2009, 2010 and 2011, and it is our explicit intention to use this pledge to attract other donations. Indeed, I would like to take this opportunity to urge you all to contribute to the Financial Assistance Fund.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Item number 7 deals with two decisions, namely the resignation of the incumbent Secretary-General and the appointment of his successor. We have been informed that after having served the PCA for nine years, Mr Van den Hout wishes to step down as Secretary-General in September of this year and return to the diplomatic service.
A moment ago I outlined the Court’s recent history with the help of some telling statistics. These facts and figures show that the Secretary-General has served with distinction accomplishing great things during his term of office. As the President of the Council, I believe that we are indebted to him.
Yet credit for the progress of the Permanent Court is not the Secretary-General’s alone. Without the staff of the International Bureau, this never would have been possible. Now that the staff are looking ahead to a changing of the guard, I want to acknowledge their share in the Court’s success.
In his letter of 31 March the Secretary-General informed the Council of my intention to nominate Ambassador Christiaan Kröner as Mr Van den Hout’s successor. With his strong record of service, Ambassador Kröner is well suited to this important position. But ultimately, of course, the decision is in your hands.
I would now propose that we turn our attention to the agenda. The secretary-general of my ministry will act as chair for the rest of the meeting. Thank you for your attention.