Friday, April 01, 2005
ICC: the rookie at bat
The first story is about how the world is adapting to crimes against humanity. I am beginning to think that world will evolve towards treating crimes against humanity as crimes by individuals. By this I mean that the efforts to enforce the laws of humanity are not going to be the armies of nations crashing against each other like in WWII or in Kosovo, but rather a slower (and much much cheap) noose that closes around those who commit these crimes.
The second story is that the U.S. has been forced to recognized the authority of the ICC as the international body to deal with this form of crime. Unfortunately, it is woefully under equiped compared to its mandate (I can see frothing amercons screaming that ICC is useless because it never gets things do-- of course that will be because a) it has no resources b) it is by nature a slow process--wham bam thank you ma'am school of justice people will have issues with such an organization. Back on topic, the U.S. has been struggling to make sure that it will never be prosecuted under the ICC (They say it is to protect their soldiers, but it is bloody mass murderers like Kissenger and the current group of bloodsuckers that really are afraid). The fact that they have given in means that they have tacitly admitted the illegitmacy of their own position. Source a point for the rule of law.
Jax
The international criminal court was poised to launch a war crimes investigation yesterday into the mass murder and rapes in the Darfur region of Sudan, after international pressure forced the US to withdraw its objections.
The UN security council was expected to back a resolution authorising the prosecution of Sudanese war crimes suspects by the court in a case that could prove crucial to establishing the court's legitimacy.
Prosecutors said in January they would welcome the Darfur case if they were given jurisdiction by the UN. But that was thought unlikely given US opposition to the creation of the court and its involvement in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered and even more displaced over the past 18 months.
A House of Commons report released on Wednesday estimated the total number of dead in the region at "some where around 300,000" and accused the international community of a "scandalously ineffective response" to the situation. The sheer scale of the conflict in Darfur and the danger of sending investigators into a conflict zone will cause difficulties for the court, which has yet to try a case. It will also be expensive, placing a huge strain on the court's £46m budget. But a successful prosecution would help establish its authority. Michael Wladimiroff, a lawyer who defended the first suspect at the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the mid-90s, called the apparent shift in US policy an unexpected change that could open the way for further cases at the court, which is based in The Hague. "This means the court ... can now be used as an instrument by the security council," he said. "All of a sudden there will be a change from waiting for cases to expanding capacity and moving more quickly toward trials." The ICC can intervene only when countries are "unwilling or unable" to dispense justice themselves. Ninety-eight countries ratified its founding treaty in July 2002 to prosecute individual perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The US, which opposed its creation, has been determined to undermine it for fear that one day American troops might be in the dock. It refuses to hand over US nationals to the court and has signed bilateral immunity deals with several other countries guaranteeing that Americans would not be handed over to the court. (Link)
