Trinidad & Tobago Ambassador Calls for Expansion of ICC Jurisdiction to Include Illegal Drug Trafficking

On October 3, 2007, Philip Sealy, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations, called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to add narcotics trafficking as a crime under the court’s jurisdiction. Sealy, speaking at the sixty-first session of the General Assembly at U.N. Headquarters in New York, argued that the ICC should broaden its scope, and that: The time has come for the international community to recognize the illicit trafficking of drugs as an international crime subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC...We must seize this opportunity now dictated by international trends to engage fully the ICC in efforts to stem the tide of this scourge (drug trafficking) and similarly to consider the inclusion of terrorism...[more]