Kofi Annan Quotes

I know people have tried to make citizens' arrests on Tony Blair and so on, but really it's time the international criminal court has some guts and charges white war criminals. They need to face justice just like other war criminals.

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations.

Institutions can eventually overcome all the legal barriers erected to shield perpetrators of crimes against humanity Justice was finally done where it needed to be done – in Argentina itself.

My government believes that those who commit crimes against humanity should be brought to justice.

Until now, when powerful men committed crimes against humanity, they knew that as long as they remained powerful, no earthly court could judge them.

Why is it that we go to immense lengths getting the Serbs who were responsible for the massacre of 7,000 at Srbrenica-that's slightly more than the total figure for New York 9/11-and we take them to a tribunal in The Hague, and one after another, we arraign them, try them, convict them, and punish them in front of the world, but no plans have been brought forward to get Osama bin Laden and his friends and put them on trial.

I've been deeply concerned that to date no individuals have been convicted for the brutal killing of three United States citizens, the Bytyqi brothers: Agron, Ylli, and Mehmet.... It's a long time ago, we want to move on, but eleven years after the discovery of their bodies no one has been held accountable for their killing and the chief suspects in the chain of command, including the camp commander, have never been charged.

We need to keep examining evilness. For instance, I'm totally against the fact that Osama bin Laden was shot. I think that he should have been put on trial and exposed as that human being he was. I think he should've been standing mentally naked in front of the rest of us and stand to justice for what he did.

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

I think that you are a war criminal, and I am going to do everything in my power to see that you will be tried as one.

The prohibitions of international law are largely toothless, especially when the abusive governments remain in power. The international community has established criminal tribunals to try abusers, but those who remain in power are ordinarily shielded from prosecution by their governments and its protection.

Some leaders, of course, have also committed crimes, and they have blood on their hands. Or they have secret accounts with stolen money. And so if they leave, people will come after them. So they just don’t leave. Like in Sudan: if you leave, you end up at the International Criminal Court. Staying in power is a form of insurance policy against the long arm of the law.

We have to work together in order to prove that genocidal campaigns will fail and lead to accountability of the perpetrators and bring justice for survivors.

One of the emphases of the new democratic order is no impunity.

[N]o clear steps have actually been taken to apprehend and prosecute those known to have been in command of the camp or the forces operating there....The new government of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has pledged to act. It must now generate the political will to act. The protection of those responsible for this crime can no longer be tolerated.

I haven't mentioned another argument, The Hague tribunal. It is clear our generals and all of you who are sitting here now with me could end up there, too.

We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities.

Justice for the major perpetrators cannot be separated from the vindication of the rights of the individual victim.

The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal.

Nearly 60 years ago, the international community made a commitment to put an end to the crime of genocide by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Henry Kissinger is the greatest living war criminal in the world today, with the blood of millions of people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and Chile and East Timor on his hands. He will never appear in a court or be behind bars.

They have been waiting for eight years to tell me that I am a war criminal and now they do it.

The United States normally punishes war crimes as such only if their committed by enemy nationals.

There can be no deal, no amnesty for war crimes.

Had there been the threat of Nuremburg-style trials for members of the apartheid state security establishment we would never have undergone a peaceful change.