How Will The Hariri Tribunal Judges Be Appointed?

The UN secretary General outlines the process in which the Judges in the Hariri tribunal will be appointed.

Will ours be as diverse?

Since the Hariri Tribunal will have a certain amount of Lebanese Judges in it, it was expected that selecting them would be an explosive process in this polarized country. M.P. Walid Jumblat recently said that the “mother of all battles” was the selection of the Lebanese Judges.

This in mind, the United Nations came up with a selection process that it hoped would focus more on merit and less on politics. Mr. Ban Ki Moon outlined this process:

The judges will be appointed by the United Nations from a list of 12 nominated by the Lebanese government. Lebanon on July 17 submitted such a list, which will remained sealed until the selection process begins.Ban said a panel of experts would “interview the candidates during the autumn and I hope to appoint the judges by the end of 2007.”

In other words, the final selection of Lebanese judges will be at the discretion of the United Nations, not the Lebanese political system. Hopefully, this would remove the issue from the Lebanese political tag of war.

But that doesn’t mean the Tribunal is no longer used for politics. Back in Lebanon, our Minister of Justice Mr. Charels Rizk is pitching himself as the Tribunal’s presidential candidate. After an upbeat progress report, Mr. Rizk, an eligible Maronite, said:

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Translation (mine):

The Tribunal is the most pressing issue. It is therefore crucial that the President be cognizant of the subject matter so that the Tribunal would be a justice seeking institution, not a political instrument to get at this or that regime.