Carla del Ponte – “Europe needs to open its doors for people who would otherwise die of starvation, from diseases or the war.”
For decades, Carla del Ponte has devoted herself to the most gruesome crimes: money laundering, organized crime, arms smuggling and cross-border economic crime, prosecution of serious crime during the Yugoslav Wars, the genocide in Rwanda, fight against the Mafia, including death threats – you name it. She was right in the middle in the swamp of evil. Correspondingly, she shows little understanding for the past of perpetrators. Eventually, everyone would be grown up and had to vouch for his deeds. She says of herself that she was a miserable advocate. To be good in it you would need a special character that she lacked.
If you never met the former prosecutor, federal prosecutor, Ambassador in Argentina and Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, you might anticipate her to be this “Iron Lady” à la Margaret Thatcher. Surprisingly enough, Carla Del Ponte acts anything but iron. She is rather jovial, funny, charming, open and quite self-deprecating. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper “Blick” she once said that, despite all the horror scenarios, she had never become cynical as she had more or less grown into these horrors. She learned not to allow feelings in her work which would be a great gift. Some of her staff in Ruanda and Yugoslavia Tribunal had to stop at some point because they had to deal with psychological issues. One would need a special character to cope with what she faces daily – and she fortunately had this character.
Today she is a member of the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic” and advocates for human rights in Syria. She considers the civil war in Syria as even worse than the Yugoslav wars. She believes that it is worse in the sense that victims would not only be killed and displaced, but also tortured until they died. For her, it is certain that no one will win this war. She only foresees that the state of Syria as it is today will no longer exist.
Her opinion about the current refugee debate in Europe runs pretty clear: accept refugees and protect them from hunger, disease and war is the least that we could do, says Carla del Ponte. Europe and Switzerland needed to open their doors for people who would otherwise be doomed to die. “We can not simply close our eyes”, she said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper “Blick”.
In her impressive speeches, she tells stories of her life that you might consider to be a movie scenario rather than real life. She was responsible for the penal conviction of some of the worst criminals of our time while risking her life. Questions such as “is the evil trivial” or “can you do smalltalk with mass murderers” belonged to her professional life for decades. Get to know the unique Carla del Ponte! We are happy to provide you with any further information: Carla.del-ponte@premium-speakers.com