The ICC, the International Criminal Court—the proposed judicial arm of the New World Order—is one step closer to becoming a reality. For five weeks this summer, the United Nations engaged in a protracted, angry, and dangerous debate on the establishment of the ICC. In the mainstream Western media, the ICC was portrayed as a permanent war crimes tribunal, a perpetual Nuremberg court. But in the plenary assemblies and conference rooms, a debate raged over the anti-family “social engineering” agenda which a few developed countries (notably Canada) were trying to foist on the rest of the world.

The discussion in Rome focused not on war criminals like Cambodia’s Pol Pot but on the inclusion of “enforced pregnancy” as a war crime and on the ICC’s commitment to a “gender perspective” in its deliberations. Both are code phrases, like those promoted by the influential Women’s Caucus at earlier U.N. conferences in Beijing, Istanbul, and Cairo. The first means “denying pregnant woman an abortion,” and the second means prosecuting “gender crimes” like discrimination against homosexuals. In addition, the U.N. globalists wanted complete prosecutorial independence for the ICC, something relatively useless in an active war zone, but just the thing for muscling small, traditional countries that still have legal restraints on “reproductive freedom” (more U.N.-speak for abortion).

On the one side of the debate were the so-called “soft-power” countries like Canada, Britain, and Holland, together with the U.N. “apparatchiks” and virtually all of the world media. On the other side, largely unreported, were the Holy See, most of the Catholic and Muslim countries of the Southern Hemisphere, and the United States. The maneuverings were often dishonest, with Canada in particular scheduling meetings that deliberately excluded Muslim countries, and interpreters were frequently excluded from the English-language deliberations. By the time the final document came up for a vote, however, the definition of “enforced pregnancy” was tightened up to condemn only the “forcible confinement” of a pregnant woman, previously raped in order to alter the ethnic composition of a territory.

Given the “global juggernaut,” some 100-plus countries voted for the agreement, only eight voted against it (the United States, Israel, China, Costa Rica, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen), and 60-plus countries abstained (mostly from the Southern Hemisphere). Secretary General Kofi Annan boasted that the U.N. had taken the first step toward a “global human rights tribunal”—which is to say, something more than the advertised war crimes court.

Before the Rome agreement becomes international law, however, it must be ratified by the governments of at least 60 countries. The “Law of the Sea” convention, a generation ago, took 12 years to get 60 countries signed on. In the case of the far more contentious ICC, some countries (like the Russian Federation) clearly agreed to it with no intention whatsoever of ratifying it. So it may end up simply lingering, like an unwanted houseguest.

Does this mean that the ICC agreement is toothless? No. For years, the Canadian government (for one) has tried to use international agreements to advance domestic agendas it could never get past its own parliament. At the 1994 Beijing Conference on Women, for example, the Canadian delegation was at the forefront of the attempt to enshrine “five genders” in international law; and some of the more notable Canadian “antispanking” court cases refer to the (antiparental) U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document that has no binding legal force. Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Antonio Lamer has said that the court has a duty to enforce international agreements, “even if they have not yet been ratified.”

For those countries lucky enough to enjoy the rule of law, “customary international law” has always been incorporated into their domestic codes. But these days, thanks to the U.N. and its “soft-power” puppet masters, “customary law” is changing almost weekly. There is nothing to stop the existing ad hoc war crimes tribunals from using Rome’s incomplete “gender crimes” agreement to enforce gay “refugee reunification” rights. And with that international precedent, there would be nothing to stop an immigration court judge, even in the United States, from ordering gay “family reunification” rights. Perhaps the judges might restrain themselves.