The world's first permanent international court of criminal justice opened for business earlier this month when the first 18 judges were sworn in. While the establishment of the International Criminal Court, or ICC, is a milestone, attention on March 11 was focused as much on the parties who were absent from the proceedings as on those that were present. Three of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, China and Russia -- have opposed the establishment of the new tribunal. The war with Iraq shows how shortsighted and counterproductive that opposition is.

The ICC was established in 1998 by a treaty that has since been signed by 89 countries. Officially, the tribunal opened in July 2002 when 60 countries ratified the convention, but it has not had the key personnel required to conduct business. The 11 men and seven women who have joined the bench will hear cases involving genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Anyone, from a head of state to an ordinary citizen, is potentially subject to its jurisdiction. More than 200 complaints have already been lodged with the court.

The court is not unprecedented. There have been ad hoc war crimes trials in the past, from the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after World War II to existing courts that are trying cases arising from the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Unlike the latter two tribunals, the new court will not be a U.N. body, which means, in principle, that it will be sheltered from the political considerations that all too often influence that institution's actions.