The Registrars of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Mr. Hans Holthuis and Mr. Adama Dieng respectively, today signed a joint statement on co-operation aimed at improving the work of both Tribunals.

The statement was signed during a one-week official visit of the Registrar of the ICTY, which is based in The Hague, The Netherlands, to the seat of the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. The Tribunals, which are both ad hoc, already share the same Appeals Chamber and Prosecutor.

During his visit Mr. Holthuis held fruitful discussions and brainstorming sessions with his counterpart Mr. Dieng and other senior officials of the ICTR and visited the Tribunal’s United Nations Detention Facility in Arusha.

The envisaged areas of co-operation between the two Tribunals include court management, judicial matters, chambers, including the Appeals Chamber, legal aid and defence matters, legal advisory matters, library, and victims and witnesses issues.

Other areas are outreach programmes, administrative matters, public information and press relations, translation matters and enhancement of communication through the use of satellite facilities.

Speaking to the press, the two Registrars said that they were striving to achieve the common goal of completing the respective mandates of the two Tribunals by the year 2008, or as soon thereafter as possible.

They said that there were several areas where each Tribunal could learn from the experience of the other and other areas where both Tribunals could pool resources together to enhance efficiency.