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In a unanimous vote on Wednesday, the 15-member UN Security Council approved a proposal for the appointment of 18 more temporary judges to help expedite trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The Council was acting on a proposal submitted by ICTR President Navanethem Pillay on 9 July 2001 for a pool of temporary judges to help clear the backlog of cases at the facility in Arusha, northern Tanzania.
"If the judicial capacity is increased with the ad litem judges, and if the prosecutor drastically revises her investigative programme, I believe that the ICTR can complete its work by 2007," she said in her proposal.
The tribunal has come under considerable criticism from the Rwandan government for what it says is the slow pace of trials conducted by the ICTR. For its part, the ICTR has complained that the government in Kigali has impeded the availability of witnesses in Arusha by introducing new travel requirements for citizens leaving the country.
The temporary judges will be elected for four-year terms, and will not be eligible for re-election. They will, however, be vested with the same powers as the tribunal's permanent judges.
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