12 tribunals, for example (the Inter-American and the European Courts of Human Rights), have expanded access to justice to subjects of international law other than the States. 24 They have done what the ICJ has been unable to do (owing to the anachronic limitations of its Statute). The many contemporary international tribunals are responding to an urgent need of the international community as a whole. And the individual has finally been given access to justice, at the international as well as the national level. 44. Specialized international tribunals, such as the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights, and the international criminal tribunals ad hoc for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda have affirmed universal principles, and the primacy of humanitarianism over traditional mechanisms of the inter-State contentious sphere. 25 Their work has been complementary to that of the ICJ (which has also referred to elementary considerations of humanity), and has contributed to raising contemporary international contentious matters to a new universalist dimension, over and above the peaceful solution of international disputes on a strictly inter-State basis. In this way, they have enriched contemporary public international law. 45. The multiplicity of international tribunals is, consequently, an encouraging phenomenon, offering additional forums for access to justice, and also providing justice at an international level. Attention should be focused on this healthy substantive development, which is a reflection of the expansion of the application of international law in general and of judicial solutions in particular, 26 instead of trying – as some doctrinaires have attempted – to create an artificial “problem” based on the traditional concern with the delimitation of jurisdictions. The questions posed by the co-existence of the international tribunals can be adequately examined in the dialogue between international judges, and not on the basis of puerile self-assertions of alleged primacy (of one court over the others). 46. As I stated recently, in my address, as guest speaker, on the occasion of the opening of the 2004 judicial year of the European Court of Human Rights (on January 22, 2004) in the Palais des Droits de l'Homme in Strasbourg): "This is a point which deserves to be stressed on the present occasion, as in some international legal circles attention has been diverted in recent years from this fundamental achievement to the false problem of the so-called `proliferation of international tribunals'. This narrow-minded, inelegant and derogatory expression simply misses the key point of the considerable advances of the old ideal of international justice in the contemporary world. The establishment of new international tribunals is but a reflection of the way contemporary international law has evolved, and of the current search for, and construction of, an international community guided by the rule of law and 24 . A.A. Cançado Trindade, El Acceso Directo del Individuo a los Tribunales Internacionales de Derechos Humanos, Bilbao, Universidad de Deusto, 2001, pp. 9-104; and cf. H. Ascensio, "La notion de juridiction internationale en question", in La juridictionnalisation du Droit international (Colloque de Lille), Paris, Pédone, 2003, p. 198; J.-P. Cot, "Le monde de la justice internationale", in ibid., pp. 517 y 521; M. Bedjaoui, "La multiplication des tribunaux internationaux ou la bonne fortune du droit des gens", in ibid., pp. 541-544. 25 . M. Koskenniemi and P. Leino, "Fragmentation of International Law? Postmodern Anxieties", 15 Leiden Journal of International Law (2002) pp. 576-578. – It may be recalled that, in the M/V Saiga case (1999), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLS) also evoked basic considerations of humanity; cf. ITLS, M/V Saiga case (No. 2) (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines v. Guinea), Reports of Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders (1999), paras. 155-156. 26 . Cf. J.I. Charney, "Is International Law Threatened by Multiple International Tribunals?", 271 Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1998) pp. 116, 121, 125, 135, 347, 351 and 373.