A GLOBAL CONTRIBUTOR

It is a special pleasure for me to write in honor of Louise Arbour because she is a person I hold in the highest esteem and whom I am privileged to consider a friend. I first met Louise in 1998 in Canberra. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Pacific Delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Australian Red Cross had joined forces to organize a roundtable of South East Asian and South Pacific States to discuss the Rome Statute, then recently opened for signature. Louise was the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda at the time, and she had travelled for a full day of her life from The Hague to speak to the gathered representatives. She spoke passionately about the importance of a collective commitment to global justice and of the historical significance of the creation of the world's first permanent international criminal court. And people listened to her as they always do. Few people are imbued with such commanding presence as to “fill” any room they enter. Louise Arbour is exceptional. I was enthralled all those years ago and have been ever since. Louise commands the attention of others and her relatively diminutive height is testament to the irrelevance of physical stature for meritorious contribution in the world. For me, Louise is the quintessential “pocket rocket.”

My friendship with Louise was initiated following the Canberra roundtable when she and I joined a group of organizers for a post-roundtable social debrief. I have little if any recollection of the content of our discussions, but I do remember laughing long and loud as we thoroughly enjoyed the conviviality of the evening. It is one thing to share values and philosophical approach to one's profession; it is an additional blessing to experience deep satisfaction in eating, drinking and laughing together. In the 18 years since we first met, I have stayed in touch with Louise principally by catching up whenever we happen to have been in the same place – in The Hague, Ottawa, Geneva, Brussels, Melbourne and most recently in Vancouver.