The swearing-in ceremony of three of the five newly elected judges by the United Nations General Assembly for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda will be held in Arusha on 22 February 1999. The ceremony will take place in the newly constructed third courtroom of the Tribunal, which will also be inaugurated on the same day.

The three judges are Lloyd George Williams QC (Jamaica and Saint Kitts and Nevis), Dionysios Kondylis (Greece), and Pavel Dolenc (Slovenia). The three, elected on 3 November 1998, are to perform their duties in the third Trial Chamber, which was established by the Security Council last year to try, without delay, the large number of accused currently awaiting trial.

The ceremony will be attended by President Judge Laïty Kama, Registrar Mr. Agwu Ukiwe Okali (representing the United Nations Secretary-General), judges of the Tribunal, Prosecutor Judge Louise Abour, Deputy Prosecutor Mr. Bernard Muna, members of the diplomatic community, invited guests, and the media.

The two other new judges, Mehmet Güney (Turkey) and Erik Mose (Norway), were elected to replace Judges Lennart Aspegren (Sweden) and Tafazzal Khan (Bangladesh) who have retired. These and four other judges of the Tribunal that have been re-elected by the UN General Assembly - Judges Laïty Kama (Senegal), Yakov Ostrovsky (Russian Federation), William Sekule (Tanzania), and Navanethem Pillay (South Africa) - will be sworn in in May 1999.

The new judges will bring the total number of judges serving the Tribunal in the three Trial Chambers to nine. The judges are to serve a term of office of four years to end on 24 May 2003.