Human Rightings

Peace of Mind

2010-10-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

On December 10, 1896 Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, died. Nobel, not being satisfied with the sheer destructive power he unleashed upon the world, decided to bequeath his fortune to a series of ill-defined annual prizes.[1] The fifth and final prize was to be given to individuals “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Earlier this month that prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China."

Liu, in prison since June 2009, was one the favorites to win the prize last year. Last year’s selection, if you remember, was the source of much criticism. It was awarded to President Obama, who hardly had any achievements to his credit when the announcement was made. This time around it appears the selection committee was trying to make amends by acknowledging an imprisoned dissident who is hardly known outside of human rights circles.

Despite appearances the honoring of Liu is not a break from the pattern that has developed over the last few years. The inclusion of President Obama, Al Gore and the IPCC, and Mohamed El Baradei and the IAEA as Nobel laureates has turned the Nobel Peace Prize into political statement. It is no longer recognition of achievements but a statement of aspiration.

Some have argued this prize will encourage the Chinese democracy movement.[2] This seems unlikely. Most Chinese have never heard of Liu Xiaobo. A more likely outcome is that China will use this as an excuse to imprison and intimidate democracy activists. In fact crackdowns have already begun. The authorities placed Liu’s wife under house arrest before the weekend was over.

Even if the spotlight now shining on Liu is bright enough to empower democracy activists it is still an award for something that has yet to happen.[3] China is not a democracy and although Liu has given a voice to thousands of dissidents it is questionable whether his actions have made China any less authoritarian.

If Liu was not deserving of the prize then who should it have gone to? In my opinion, there was no candidate worthy of such an honor.

These are tumultuous times. To varying degrees armed conflict is being waged on nearly every continent. News of human rights violations becomes more shocking with each passing day. There are good people, great people, working on solutions. But we have not yet fulfilled our potential. Peace has not come to pass in this world. We are a long way from tranquility. I do not mean to diminish the accomplishments of Liu or any other Nobel laureates. Their accomplishments are awe inspiring by any standard.

But the Nobel Peace Prize should be an acknowledgement of a job well done, not a signal of the way we wish things to be or an admonishment of the way things are.

Since 1901 the Nobel Committee has declined to name a laureate 19 times. My hope is that the Nobel Committee does not reward a prize next year or the year after until we find an individual who has made the world significantly better. A year without a laureate does not mean we have failed. It just means we have not yet succeeded.

[1] The Nobel Prize in Literature is supposed to be awarded to those individuals who produced "in the field of literature, the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." Sound simple? Then explain why Dario Fo is a Nobel laureate and James Joyce is not.

[2] William Inboden thinks that President Obama should hold a live press conference calling on China to release Liu. How this will lead to democracy is unclear. Also unclear is what dimension Inboden hails from. This reality’s Obama administration cancels meetings with the Dalai Lama and backpedals on statements regarding the yuan. A statements about Chinese political prisoners from the highest levels of government does not really seem like it’s in the cards.

[3] Liu will most certainly not reap the full benefits of becoming a Nobel laureate. The Chinese government will not allow to travel to Oslo to deliver his Nobel lecture nor will he allowed to accept his prize money.

Who Will Think of the Children?

2010-10-01T08:20:00.001-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a film nerd. Suffice to say I’ve learned the hard way few things end a conversation faster than launching into a 30 minute lecture on how “It’s a Wonderful Life” is actually an allegory for the evils of capitalism.

What can I say? I have a critical mind. And since my mind is often focused on human rights I tend to interpret movies through that lens. This may explain my recent affinity for horror movies. Horror films aren’t particularly smart films, they don’t require much analysis or thinking. It gets dark, crazy guy kills all the promiscuous teens and/or minority characters, roll credits.

It was with this mentality that I sat down to watch “Who Can Kill a Child?” One of the interesting things about Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s 1976 film is that it’s not easy to come by. Released in the United States and the United Kingdom under a number of different names, including “Island of the Damned”, it wasn’t released on any home video format until 2007.

The plot is fairly simple. An English couple goes to Spain for holiday. They travel to a remote island where they find plenty of children but no adults. Turns out the kids woke up one night and decided to start killing. Now the couple need to get off the island before they become the next victims.

Despite the title “Who Can Kill a Child?” is not too shocking when compared with recent horror films. There is killing to be sure, but the vast majority of violence is shown off-screen and the gory is quite minimal.

The purpose of the film is not to shock you with gore. No, the purpose is to shock you with the answer to the title’s question. Upon first glance our answer is no one. Killing a child is an act of unspeakable evil. This point is hammered home by the first eight minutes of the film which, using news reel footage, is a chronicle of the toll war takes on children from World War II to Vietnam. But as the film progresses, as the laughter of children becomes a grating noise, we find ourselves hoping the protagonists take out at least one or two brats before the credits roll. In the span of two hours we go from deploring evil to sympathizing with it.

The true horror in the film lies not in the violence, but in the realization that the answer to the title question is anyone, everyone. Children are casualties of war, true, but they are also victims. After the dust is settled and the peace is signed they are the ones who will suffer the most in the aftermath. Be it psychologically or physically. And it’s not just violence that claims children. Suffering can be found in relatively peaceful countries.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child may be the most ratified human rights convention in history but it also may be the least enforced. Just in Nepal, for example, between 2002 and 2006 over 22,000 children were forcibly recruited as soldiers. Australia’s policy of asylum detention has systematically denied children of number of rights, including depriving children of a family environment.

Children deserve a better world. A world where the answer to “who can kill a child” is honestly “no one.”

Really Wrong About Human Rights

2010-09-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

Last week the Philadelphia Inquirer published an interesting “article” by Roger Pilon, vice president of the Cato Institute. Mr. Pilon makes the following points-

Muslims have rights, but they apparently lack the ability to make good decisions (and that’s just the first paragraph!).
Equality before the law is good. As long as the US says so.
Economic, social and cultural rights are socialist plants.
Human rights will destroy the world.

Let’s all give Mr. Pilson a hand for making some very excellent points. And by “excellent” I mean completely crazy and without any factual basis whatsoever. Let’s roll up our sleeves and wade into the nutso.

“Even the current controversy over an Islamic center near ground zero isn't about the right to build there; it's about the wisdom of doing so.”

I could go on and on about this, but let’s just leave it at no, it’s not about “wisdom.” If it was then we’d stop building churches in the land of the Crusades.

“Or consider this point: ‘Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer 114 percent more often than non-Hispanic white men.’ That's a human-rights problem?”

Why, yes, yes it is. Many countries do not provide adequate health care to minority groups. The UN recognized this when they wrote Article 12(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: “The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. “

Unfortunately, the US is not a party to the ICESCR. This, however, does not invalidate Article 12(1) as a human right. In fact, even as just a plain signatory the US is obligated to “refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of the treaty.”

The US is not a state party to a number of human rights conventions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Does this mean children have no rights? Of course not. The US, like it or not, is a member of a global community and 160 of those members, a clear majority, agree with Article 12(1). Among those that don’t? Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Burma. Pilon has some fun taking pot shots at human rights violators sitting on the Human Rights Council. He falls to recognize that the US finds many of these countries allies in opposition to the ICESCR.

“History has shown that nations that promise everything as a matter of rights have provided little but the oppression required by that misconceived goal. We should not abandon a distinction at the core of our political order that has enabled us to be both free and prosperous — much less do so in the good name of human rights.”

History has shown this? Oh really? Where exactly? Yeah, that’s what I thought. On the opposite side of the spectrum, India is not only a party to the ICESCR, but has also enshrined in its constitution such rights as health care (Article 47) and fair wages (Article 43). So far India has not descended into anarchy.

The tragedy would not be to designate too many rights, but to divide rights into classes or categories. Human rights are indivisible and universal. It is not up to one country or individual to decide which are good and which are less so.

Dial M for [Conflict] Minerals

2010-06-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Enough’s Conflict Minerals campaign reached a fever pitch this past week with a protest at Washington D.C.’s new Apple store, a spoof Mac commercial, a Nicholas Kristof op-ed and consideration of a conflict minerals bill in Congress.

The evolution from “blood diamonds” to “blood phones” (ugh) is easy to trace. Not many people interact with diamonds on a daily basis, but the vast majority of Americans own at least a cell phone and a computer. The reservoir of white person’s guilt runs deep; it is just a matter of finding a way to tap it. This is how it’s done- Send a text today? That text helped finance millions of rapes in the Dark Continent. Bad hipster.

Unfortunately, the so-called “conflict minerals” may not be involved in conflict. As Texas in Africa points out, there is no direct causal relationship between the mineral trade and violence in the DRC. Even if there were reliable data demonstrating a direct link, conflict minerals advocates have failed to make a convincing argument that electronics suppliers are using minerals originating from the DRC. Apple is notoriously secretive, especially when it comes to the identity of its suppliers. When the iPhone 3G was released a list of suppliers was supposedly leaked and subsequently debunked. The Enough Project even admits the supply chain lacks transparency. And while it’s true the DRC has a number of tantalum mines, the primary source of the world’s tantalum is Australia. Mines also exist in China, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Thailand and Malaysia. Now ask yourself, if your job was to keep the tantalum flowing would you rather deal with the DRC or Australia?

I’m probably the furthest thing from a free market capitalist, but I can’t help but wonder how something akin to the Kimberly Process would impact the economics of cell phones. Certainly not every mine is controlled by bloodthirsty warlords. Would a more stringent auditing process force down the already miniscule wages mine workers are paid? Are we trading our piece of mind for someone else’s quality of life? More worrisome is whether Enough’s demands would force cell phone prices up. My pockets probably won’t be hurting, but what about those in the developing world? They are far from a silver bullet, but cell phones are, without argument, a transforming force for many in the developing world. They have revolutionized banking, microfinance, the reporting of human rights violations, and access to medical care. Will a demand for conflict free minerals turn manufacturers to employ more expensive suppliers in parts of the world where these minerals are more difficult to extract?

Even if Apple, Intel, Microsoft and other electronic companies adopted Enough’s suggestions about transparency and certification with minimum costs it is unlikely this would lead to a drop in violence. What would lead to a drop in violence? Investment in infrastructure, good governance, ending the culture of impunity, tackling the illegal arms trade (hell, even the legal arms trade) or any number of other programs that don’t involve a dubious linkage between bloodshed and a popular consumer product.

Failure is an Option

2009-12-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

For the past two weeks a major sports athlete’s indiscretions have dominated the news cycle. The sheer amount of coverage if perplexing not because everyone seems to think should have an opinion about one man’s private life but also because we seem genuinely shocked about this man’s fallibility. Human beings fail. This is not news nor is it a revelation.

On December 3^rd, an alleged mistress was set to give a press conference. On another continent a bomb went off in the Hotel Shamo, killing nearly half of Benadir University’s Class of 2009. Here were 24 human beings who saw pain in the world and wanted to end it. This was only the second medical class to graduate in Somalia in the last two decades. Here were two dozen people who saw the myriad problems in their homeland did not abandon it, did not look for greener pastures. They were making a stand. But this is not news.

No, failure is news. And such is a reminder of our failure. We have failed Somalia. We have failed Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Burma, Sudan, Fiji, Guinea, Chile, Argentina, Selma, Alabama and Newark, New Jersey. And the list does not end there.

Perhaps if we dedicated half of the resources we are currently using to crank out golf and sexual innuendo jokes we would have been able to make 1996 the year we eradicated poverty instead of just passing a toothless resolution. On the other hand only 27 years passed between the International Year of Disabled Persons and an international convention on the rights of disabled persons, so hey maybe they can look forward to actual change in the next three to four decades.

On the 61^st anniversary of the Universal Declaration we should remember our failures. We should remember how many people still are born into slavery, how many governments refuse to allow their citizens privacy, how many journalists risk their lives every day reporting on rights violations. And while we remember all those we failed let us commit ourselves to a single success this year. Let this be the year that all of us take a stand.

Red, White, and Truth

2009-09-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year Senator Leahy called for the establishment of a "truth commission" to investigate crimes committed by the Bush administration carried out during "The Global War on Terror." Aside from a committee hearing and a House bill that failed to gain any traction, the idea of prosecuting US government agents for gross human rights violations faded away. That is until late last month when Attorney General Holder officially opened an investigation into whether any CIA interrogators crossed legal boundaries.

This investigation poses an interesting question--should we investigate the crimes of past administrations? The answer is, of course, an absolute yes. Even if they were done under the guise of protecting American lives the actions of leaders should not be immune from scrutiny and, if necessary, prosecution. However, in this case a truth and reconciliation commission would be an error.

To begin with, American society does not place very much value on truth and reconciliation commissions. This is not to say restorative justice is without its merits or even that one theory of justice is better than another. The opinion of the average American is that criminals should be punished, they should not spend months recounting their crimes and then receive immunity. Widespread support of the death penalty is but one example of the rigid view Americans have justice. For many citizens a TRC would not bring sufficient legal closure to the crimes in question.

A critical element of restorative justice is that the victims and the prepetrators establish a dialogue. However, in the case of this proposed committee the only dialogue will be between different branches of government. Those who were tortured will not have an opportunity to address their traumas or demand confessions from their interrogators. The US government would be putting the US government on trial. One political party would be tsk-tsking another. It is an act of political theater in the highest degree. Prior TRCs, like those in South Africa and East Timor, are a symbolic breaks with the past and a declaration to the world that new states have risen from the ashes of the old. A commission established by the United States would have no such symbolic weight.

Another critical element of TRCs is the confessional aspect. Confessions and testimonies create an unassailable historical record and contribute to the victims sense of healing. There is a repentant aspect to this--perpetrators need to admit they committed wrongful acts. I cannot speak to the thoughts of all the interrogators, but based on recent statements by a high-ranking Bush administration official there appears to be no form of regret for the possible illegal actions taken. I realize Senator Leahy was careful to designate his proposed commission only a "truth commission", leaving out any reconcilation aspect. But again, as discussed in the paragraphs above, just airing the truth lacks any closure.

It is obvious that any human rights violations committed by the Bush administration cannot go unpunished. Those who responsible must answer for what they have done. The two paths proposed have their strengths, but they also have their weaknesses. We should find a solution where justice is pursued, but not weighed down by politics.

An Open Letter to the President

2009-08-20T03:29:00.001-07:00

Dear President Obama:

Recently you have been accused of being a Nazi, a socialist, and/or a Nazi werewolf. While some of your critics are clearly insane they do have a point--it's time to give up on health care reform. If the complete absence of any logical, rational, or coherent thought among these people has proven anything it's that someone, somewhere has failed them. This is why I urge you to begin an immediate and swift reform of the public school system. Because people need to know that Kristallnacht does not mean"Night of the Single-Payer System."

Regards,

Karl

Nazi Hunting

2009-08-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

No doubt attempting to capitalize on the most recent Tarantino picture, the Washington Post ran a story today about the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the unit charged with hunting down Nazis living in the United States.

Now here's the thing about Nazis- most of them are dead or very close to it. The article opens with OSI's latest victory, deporting 89 year old John Demjajuk to Germany. Shockingly, Jason Bourne style car chases were not involved.

The OSI was supremely aware of this ticking clock and so it was in 2004 that Congress expanded the unit's mandate to include hunting down people who were involved in a broad range of human rights violations. Unfortunately, what Congress was not aware of was that some big time human rights violators were already here on American soil. In fact, one of them used to be the dude in charge of the DOJ.

Hypocrisy aside, the question we need to ask is is the OSI still a useful institution? The Post article seems to think so and cites a number of organizations that agree. Not to beat a dead horse or to sound insensitive, but old Nazis are, well, old. Not only have they probably burnt through any resources that was keeping them hidden and protected but in a decade the problem is going to solve itself. So OSI's successes aren't particularly impressive. And the most high-profile case in recent years involving a war criminal on U.S. soil, that of Charles "Chuckie" Taylor, Jr., did not involve the OSI.

War criminals, genocidaries, dictators all need to be put alert, they need to know that justice is waiting for them and they will never find cool ground. But the OSI does not operate like that. Its goal is to ensure that American shores are safe from evil. The rest of the world can do what they want with rights violators (as long as those rights violators are not American citizens, in which case hands off). If the US government was truly serious about holding rights violators accountable there are any number of steps they can take to make this a reality. The least of which is to ratify the Rome Statute and become a full-fledged member of the ICC.

The Well-Loved Parts

2009-08-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Christine Montross went from an MA in French Poetry to medical school. It's a strange leap, unless you were looking for someone to write a beautiful, moving book about the process of becoming a doctor. In that case look no further than Body of Work.

I read the book almost two years ago, but one passage in particular stands out. The scene is a hospital room in the early morning hours; Montross and a resident are finishing up a twenty-four hour shift. One of their patients is on his deathbed surrounded by family. The family has, after much deliberation, has decided to disconnect their patriarch's ventilator and let him pass peacefully on. I'll let her tell the rest of the story-

Once an hour for the next several hours, I quietly knocked and entered Mr. A’s room to check on his exhausted family. Occasionally one or the other of them would leave for a tray of vending-machine coffee or to make a phone call to faraway relatives, but otherwise they remained. When four hours had passed with no apparent change in Mr. A’s condition, I took the resident aside. “I know I haven’t seen this kind of thing before,” I said, “but are you surprised that Mr. A is still alive?”

“Not as all,” he replied with a half smile. “In fact, I would have been surprised otherwise, since I haven’t touched his vent since we came on this morning.” I nearly stumbled as he spoke, picturing this family who was emptied off all reserves, awaiting their unenviable, but peaceful, finality of grief. My shock must have been easily recognizable because the resident quickly continued, “Have you seen the paperwork I have to do for every death on this unit? His own doctor will be on in six hours and can dial the vent down then. No one dies on my clock.”

We say we’ll never get there. I say I’ll never be that. But as doctors-in-training, we are reshaping the ways in which he react—in fact we are suppressing universal reactions of fear and grief and horror. Will I able to suppress some but not all? Will I be able to detach from strangers and maintain humanity with which I would respond to loved ones in similar circumstances? But then I am not bound to consider each patient as I would want my brother to be considered? My partner? My niece? The lines blur, and I am left feeling dissatisfied. I do not wish to blunt the spectrum of my feelings, to lose the discomfort I feel in violent movies, to lack empathy at the bedside of a dying patient. I do not wish to hear “stroke” and think of the distribution of vessels to the brain and territories they serve instead of my grandmother’s now-curled left hand and stooped walk. I do not wish to make love to my partner and think, Latissimus dorsi, umbilicus, myocardium. How much of becoming a doctor demands releasing the well-known and well-loved parts of my self?

It seems to me that humanitarian and human rights work poses a similar quandary. If we allow ourselves to be caught up in the horrific things done to people, if we pause for a moment to remember names and faces, then we become emotionally involved and become invested in a battle than may not necessarily be won. Or we take it too personally and are unable to see the bigger picture. But on the other hand if we refuse to reflect on the details, if we shut out emotions we become hardened and have no stake in righting wrongs. Instead it becomes just a job and our only goal is to get through the day.

So where do we strike the balance? How do we maintain our humanity but not wear it on our sleeves? It's a question I'm afraid I'll never quite have a satisfactory answer to.

Exhuming the Past

2009-07-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

Andrew Rice of The New Republic has a written a fascinating article on NBC's new painfully troubling new show "The Wanted" in which alleged do-gooders race around the world confronting alleged war criminals. Rice's piece focuses on the episode of "The Wanted" that tracks down Leopold Munyakazi, a Rwandan exile, professor of French and alleged genocidaire.

And this is where the story gets interesting, because the article is not so much a critique of the show (which is a easy task), but rather an exploration of competing world views--one where the world is black and white and evil will always be evil and one where shades of gray cast shadows over everything. A quote:

After class, a swirling retinue of about ten cameramen, technicians, and professional interrogators descended on Munyakazi, a broad-faced middle-aged man with an accented, lilting voice. The professor, who had been given little notice, was stunned and refused to talk on camera. After some time, two members of the faculty who knew Munyakazi, a philosophy professor and the director of the school's peace-studies program, joined the standoff, which only heightened the tension. The professors angrily challenged the Rwandan prosecutor. "They kept talking about 'competing narratives' of the genocide," Ciralsky [a producer of the show] says. "Which really could be considered code for denying the genocide."
What was happening was a collision of two different worldviews: the investigative mindset of journalists and prosecutors, with its normative emphasis on evidence, guilt, and verdicts; and the academic mode of inquiry, which is more discursive and wary of definitive judgments. The disdain between the two sides was mutual.

Anyone who closely follows human rights and/or development will know that questions about the commonly accepted narrative of Rwandan genocide have existed for many years. Mamdani has questioned the extent to which there was a clear delination between Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities. More recently, Scott Strauss has debunked the idea that Radio Mille-Collines was a driving force behind the killings. As Rice notes, Des Forges and others were vocal critics of Paul Kagme and the RPF.

There is a certain odious aura around genocide deniers, people who refuse to believe that slaughter happened. But this is not what Munyakazi is. He is a man asking us, imploring us, to dig a little deeper, to ask tough questions. The victims of genocide deserve justice, yes, but they also deserve the truth. It may not be something they will ever get. And is certainly something an hour long television episode will never give them.

Eight Panels That Changed My Life

2009-07-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

A typical job interview will include a moment when the person sitting opposite me asks why I want to work for their organization or how I became interested in this particular career. Normally I will deliver a vague answer. Sometimes I’ll reference a book I read a few years ago about Fred Cuny or my general desire to make the world a better place. The ambiguity of my reply is not because I am hiding something or because the true story is immensely boring, it’s because for the longest time I actually didn’t know why I was interested in making the world a better place. There was no singular moment I could point to and say “Yep, there I was, 4:14 pm on August 19^th, 1999, the moment that changed my life.” There was only a collection of moments, of realizations, and even put together they didn’t amount to much. I never actually had an answer. That is until I picked up an old comic book.

I’ll try to give the short and sweet, nerd-lite version. X-Men Alpha is a one-shot comic published in January 1995 to kick-off the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover. So there are these mutants, homo superior, gifted with incredible abilities such as telepathy, flight, etc. They are, for the most part, hated and despised by humans. One mutant, Charles Xavier, dreams of a world where mutants and humans can coexist peacefully. He and his X-Men fight for this better world. Unfortunately, Professor Xavier’s son travels back in time and inadvertently kills his own father. This leaves room for the evil mutant known as Apocalypse to conquer most of the world and establish his Darwinian “survival of the fittest” creed. So dawns the Age of Apocalypse.

The first page of X-Men Alpha is an image of the X-Man Bishop climbing a mountain of corpses lamenting that one never quite gets use to the smell. I was twelve years old when I first saw that panel. When I picked up the very same comic fourteen years later the page was exactly how I remembered it. Especially the faces of the corpses frozen in terror. I was initially shocked by this. Partially because of how incredibly dark this comic was and but mostly because my mind had kept this particular image in mint condition for nearly a decade and half. Not a single line was out of place. I could have drawn the page from memory and I wager I still can.

The X-Men have been used as an allegory for minorities since their initial publication in the 1960s. Xavier is an obvious stand-in for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his arch-enemy, Magneto takes on qualities of Malcolm X. As the civil rights movement began to succeed the X-Men have stood in as metaphors for other groups, such as homosexuals. (Interestingly enough, since the 1980s the X-Men have seen themselves increasingly battling religious fundamentalists.)

I never knew anyone who survived a concentration camp or a killing field. I’ve never met a Bosnian or a Rwandan. But every month I went down to the comic story and continued to read the adventures of Cyclops and Wolverine. Here were people, fictional people, with hopes and dreams, with victories and failures, families and friends. Yes, they were fictional. But they introduced me to prejudice that a white boy growing up in the Connecticut suburbs knew nothing about.

We Now Return You to Regularly Scheduled Rights Abuses

2009-07-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

BBC reported last week that the Congolese army has promised to punish any soldiers found guilty of rights abuses, specifically rape. A more cynical blogger might point out that the UN has been demanding an end to these inhumane actions since at least last November or that rape is so endemic in the DRC soldiers are not even the worst perpetrators. Hell, that cranky ole blogger might even use the phrase "Color, me skeptical" in reference to any promised future action by the DRC. But that wouldn't be this blogger. No, sir.

Don't Force It

2009-05-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

One of my most vivid grad school memories involves a final exam in which, upon beginning to write a concluding paragraph, I realized I had written an entire essay in favor of forced displacement. It was an awkward moment for me and my brain.

At the time I blamed it on days of sleep deprivation. However, upon reconsideration it is not an altogether ridiculous position. Michael Mann, in his book The Dark Side of Democracy, makes a similar claim--that the emergence of democracy is contingent on, among other things, a certain degree of homogeneity. Migration is one way to achieve that homogeneity (mass murder is, as Mann shows, the more popular course of action). Migration is also beneficial from an economic standpoint. Some countries need skilled workers, some countries have skilled workers. Bam, problem solved. Here's your global economy.

The impetus for this discussion on migration is a recent article by Matti Sarvimaki, Roope Uusitalo, and Markus Jantti for the Institute for the Study of Labor The article comes to some interesting conclusions; namely, that forced migration yields substantial long-term economic gains. As intriguing as an idea as this is I have some issues with their study.

The first red flag is the use of Finland as a case study. The authors are careful to point out that in 1945 Finland was "a predominantly agrarian society, in many ways resembling current middle-income developing countries." This may be true, but a 1945 Finland, no matter how developing it was, could not possibly resemble modern day developing countries dealing with migration. For instance, compare Finland's 1961 Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF) score, a relatively low 0.159, with Sudan's 1985 ELF score, 0.731. Now I'm not saying that a lack of ethnic homogeneity is a definite precursor to conflict or poverty. But I am suggesting that a country without a wide disparaity of ethnic groups may have an easier time settling migrants.

I am also a little concerned about the method used to determine the final sample size. Finland experienced two episodes of displacement during the Second World War. The first occurred between November 1939 and July 1940, the second occurred in 1944. In order to arrive at their final sample size the authors cross-referenced census data from 1950 onward with social security numbers, which were only issued starting in 1964. Therefore, if someone was displaced in November 1939, but died in 1963 they would not be included in this study. Logic would over course lead us to conclude that if you are economically struggling, then you do not have access to health care, are unable to support a large family, and possibly shave some years off your lifespan. However, if you are economically well off then you may indeed improve your lifespan and thus be included in the final sample size. A gap of nearly three decades of data is going to lend some bias to the study.

Concerns aside, the overall goal of the article is to attempt to show that forced migration, if done with precautions and planning, can actually be successful. It is certainly something that warrents further study.

Unfair

2009-05-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

Julie Hollar of FAIR presents an interesting breakdown of why the conflict in Darfur gets more media attention than the conflict in the DRC.

My favorite part has to be Nicholas Kristof's justification of basically ignoring a conflict that has produced the greatest loss of life since World War II. Yes, Mr. Kristof, genocide is evil, but so is recognizing suffering and standing idly by. His argument, written in 2007, is especially disingenous when one considers that the violence in Darfur significantly decreased around the end of 2005 and was recently labeled a low-intensity conflict by the UN.

Ms. Hollar does admit that the DRC is getting some recent press in regards to "conflict minerals." This is a little worrying though. We've already seen activists simplify the Darfur conflict into a false Arab v. African dicothomy. The situation in the DRC is just as, if not more, nuanced and complicated. The questionable relationship between resources and conflict may not be the best of introductions.

Fast Darfur

2009-05-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Well that didn't last very long

Promises, Promises

2009-04-28T05:57:00.000-07:00

Countries seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council are asked to produce a pledge outlining their commitments to human rights. The State Department, on behalf of the US government, released its pledge yesterday. I have gone ahead and highlighted some interesting parts.

The United States is also committed to the promotion and protection of human rights through regional organizations. Through our membership in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Organization for American States, the United States commits to continuing efforts to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to strengthening and developing institutions and mechanisms for their protection. In particular recognition of its human rights commitments within the Inter-American system, the United States strongly supports the work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

At first glance this appears to be a fairly positive development--the recognition and overtures of cooperation with a regional rights mechanism. But notice that the pledge makes no mention of abiding by decisions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a body that the US government has had a contentious relationship with (see The Haitian Centre for Human Rights v. the US for example).

The United States commits to continue its efforts to strengthen mechanisms in the international system to advance the rights, protection, and empowerment of women through, for example, supporting the full implementation of Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 on Women, Peace and Security, and all relevant General Assembly Resolutions, particularly 61/143 and 63/155, on the intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women; supporting the work of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; and supporting the work of the Inter-American Commission on Women.

All right, now we're getting somewhere--protection of the rights of women. And by protection I mean restating support for a number of toothless resolutions. No mention of CEDAW anywhere.

The United States commits to continuing to promote respect for workers rights worldwide, including by working with other governments and the International Labor Organization to adopt and enforce regulations and laws to promote respect for internationally recognized worker rights and by providing funding for technical assistance projects to build the capacity of worker organizations, employers, and governments to address labor issues including forced labor and the worst forms of child labor, such as child soldiering, workplace discrimination, and sweatshop and exploitative working conditions.

Laborers get even less assistance. Not even decades old resolutions are cited. And the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families gets no love at all.

The United States is committed to continuing its leadership role in promoting voluntary corporate social responsibility and business and human rights initiatives globally. The United States intends to convene government, civil society and business stake-holders to seek joint solutions on business and human rights, and to serve as an active participant in key multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

I was unaware that the US government had any sort of leadership role in promoting CSR. I'm actually intrigued by this pledge and hope we see some progress on this front.

The United States executive branch is committed to working with its legislative branch to consider the possible ratification of human rights treaties, including but not limited to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and ILO Convention 111 Concerning Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation.

Whoa! This is indeed quite a development and I take back all the nasty things I said (well some of them). For Clinton and Rice to overtly endorse CEDAW is a giant leap forward in terms of the US government's attitudes towards international human rights norms. Of course the language of the statement ("consider possible ratification") should give us pause and perhaps serve to mute our optimism. But still, it does signal that a seat occupied by the US on the Human Rights Council may be more than just show.

Old Boys Club

2009-04-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dahlia Lithwick's account of Safford Unified School District v. Redding is a sidesplitter. That is until you realize the Supreme Court has gotten riding roughshod over constitutional rights down to a science.

A more obvious blogger might reflect on the right to privacy or the rights of young people. But this blogger is going to point out that the reason the Court has taken this "What's the big deal for girls to strip?" attitude is because, well, the Court is basically devoid of women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is currently the only female Justice on the bench, a low from the days when there used to be two female Justices.

The US is not alone in its lack of female presence among its higher courts. Gender discrepancy in the judicary appears to be the norm for most of the G20. Argentina's Supreme Court only has two female Justices out of seven, Brazil has two of eleven, and South Africa three of eleven. Canada ruins the curve by almost giving female justices a majority with a whopping four out of nine and a female Chief Justice for good measure.

(Hat tip to Wronging Rights)

Durban II--Even better than Durban I

2009-04-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

In its reporting on Durban II the media has focused mainly on the US boycott and Mahmood "The Sultan of Tirades" Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, they've been missing out on some interesting and compelling stories. For example-

UN Watch's smackdown of Libya

Horrifying accounts of forced sterilization in EU member states (or as I prefer to call it, "Tales from the Czech")

Discrimination against albinos in Tanzania

Yes, Durban II, much like Durban I, has its flaws, but it succeeds in one respect--reminding us that there is still much work to do.

What kind of gift do you get for this anniversary?

2009-04-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago the Japanese vice minister for foreign affairs, Shintaro Ito, stated that if a condemnation of North Korea's missile launch was not made then then "existence of the Security Council as a meaningful institution will become doubtful." Unfortunately, Mr. Ito is about a decade and a half late on his misgivings over the usefulness of the Security Council.

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the infamous Security Council Resolution 912. Only two weeks after the genocide had begun in Rwanda the UN was faced with a mounting death toll, an increasingly chaotic situation on the ground and desperate pleas from the UNAMIR commander Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire for an expanded mandate and a larger ground force. Their solution? Reduce the military contingent to 270 and reiterate that UNAMIR is to keep hammering away at seeing to it that the Arusha accords are carried out. You know, cause this is really all just an itsy bitsy bump in the road.

At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Israel, there is a portion dedicated to those Gentiles that assisted the Jews during the Holocaust by obtaining false passports, providing hidding places or arranging safe passage. These brave souls are referred to as the Righteous Among Nations. It is unfortunate we have no memorial to those who refused to take action to remind us of the cost of cowardice.

Surviving the Saviors

2009-04-17T04:10:00.000-07:00

Mahmood Mamdani's new book Saviors and Survivors is quickly creating a sensation. SSRC has been hosting a rather impassioned series of reviews of the books all week. Michelle at Stop Genocide went ahead and defended Save Darfur. And Mamdani himself participated in a no-holds barred cage match with John Predergast, the poster boy for humanitarian crises. Or something along those lines.

I personally have not read the book so I'm not qualified to make judgements either way. I would, though, like to make some observations based on the reviews I have read.

What is shocking is that apparantly Mamdani either misinterpretates or completely gets wrong a number of historical facts about Sudan in general and Darfur in particular. I would not have expected this from such a well-respected academic. The general consensus seems to be that Mamdani is not a a Sudan scholar and therefore lacks a basic understanding of the history of the region. This strikes me as particularly ironic considering Mamdani's primary criticism of the Darfur activists is that they rob the conflict of historical context. In the critiques of Saviors and Survivors have shown anything it's that there are many Sudan experts among the anti-genocide constituency. Maybe that was Mamdani's intention all along? Get nearly every fact wrong to bring the academics out of the woodwork? Genius.

While I am certainly no expert on Sudan I am pretty knowledgable about genocide. (If I had a business card it would say "Knows a shit ton about genocide.") And in that respect I am generally sympathic to Mamdani's points about Darfur activists. But the idea that activists are robbing a particular event of its context shouldn't be particularly surprising. That's what activists do, they make complex issues simple in order to involve the greatest number of people. Of course, in order to simplfy these issues the activists themselves must be intimately familiar with the nuances and complexities of said issues. It is obvious that from the recent debate over Saviors and Survivors many Darfur activists do understand the complexities of the ongoing conflict.

However, my issue with these same activists is their contribution to the evolution of the definition of "genocide." What Save Darfur and their partners have done is ignore the legal definition of genocide as found in the 1948 Genocide Convention and substituted it with their populist definition; one which sees most any mass killing as genocide. As far as genocide goes I am a strict constructionist. Yes, there are problems with the Convention, but many of these can be remedied by appropriate legal and political mechanisms such as national legislation or jurisprudence. To simply adopt a broad definition of genocide because the word has an impact on the audience does the disservice to the victims of genocide. Furthermore, it reduces the crime of crimes to a campaign slogan. If we are going to show that activists can have an understanding of the complexities and nuances of Sudan than they should at least show the same respect for the law.

Finding the Light Switch

2009-04-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

There's a scene towards the end of the movie Ararat between David, a Canadian customs agent, and Raffi, a young Canadian-Armenian traveling back from Turkey. Raffi has brought back film canisters with him, a favor for a man in Turkey, but the containers are sealed with labels warning that they are not to be opened in the light or the film will be ruined. David believes Raffi is lying, the canisters contain heroin and the labels are a ruse. Raffi pleads his case and David believes that while he might not be lying Raffi has at least been tricked. The two men reach a compromise--David will turn off the light in the interrogation room and open the containers, he will use his hands, not eyes, to examine the contents. David asks Raffi one last time what he thinks is in the canisters.
"Film" Raffi replies. "That's what he told me, that's what I need to believe."
"What would happen if you didn't believe it?" David demands.
"I'd be a criminal" Raffi states.
"What if I told you it was heroin?" David queries.
"It isn't" Raffi responds.
"What makes you so sure?"
"You turn the light on."

Ararat is a powerful movie, not just about the Armenian genocide, but about history, both public and private, and the way we perceive it. I thought of this scene this week as an outcry swelled concerning President Obama's sidestepping of the Armenian genocide issue.

Along with the Holocaust and Rwanda, Armenia is generally accepted as being one of those unquestionable textbook cases of genocide. In fact the only people who seem to do all that much questioning about it are the Turks. Denial of the genocide has mellowed in recent years, shifting from a defense of the actions to a plea for historians to be the final judges of the events. Even so those calling for an official recognition of the events as a genocide have not mellowed. A resolution in the US House of Representatives expressing recognition usually crops up every year and is defeated.

The question I find myself asking though is not did genocide happen, but rather does recognition matter?

To begin with it is improbable that anyone who participated in or even witnessed the massacres is still alive today. Five hundred thousand Armenian deaths were recorded between 1914 and 1918. Let's say for arguments sake that someone born in 1913 participated in these massacres. That person would be 96 today, an age probably well past life expectancy in early 20th century Ottoman Turkey. There is no one alive to collect retribution, to put on trial, to participate in a national healing process. The recognition of these massacres is then for the current generation, not the past. But what importance does it hold for us?

Is there anything recognition of the Armenian genocide will provide for our generation? Will the branding of genocide somehow make us wiser, better equipped to predict and prevent future genocides? Highly unlikely. It will only allow us one more example of the depths of evil.

I would certainly agree that genocide deniers are the most odious of human beings. They refuse to acknowledge the worst cases of human behavior, not because of the belief that humans are inherently good, but because of a lack of overwhelming historical evidence. I do not deny the genocide in Armenia happened, I am simply skeptical about the positive impact our labeling will have. We can shine as much light on the problem as we wish, but finding one canister of heroin, exposing one genocide, will not prevent those already in motion.

The Minority Song

2009-03-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

A song/poem I wrote last summer in the throes of exam revision delirium-

Minorities, minorities
Low on the UN’s priorities.
Your main feature is non-dominance,
Unless we count the volume of jurisprudence.
Could be a group, could be a collective
Just make sure the participation’s effective.
No secession through self-determination
But that’s all right, you’re committed to integration.
Identified by your own volition,
Sitting up there with no definition!

The Kids Aren't Alright

2009-03-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to shake your head in complete disbelief. From the Invisible Children blog (via Chris Blattman)-

Alright everyone, get your TiVo’s ready. Our good friend John Prendergast at Enough has been working with the people at NBC on a special episode of “Law & Order: SVU” that will feature a back story of Child Soldiers abducted by the LRA. The episode will air on Tuesday, March 31st.

There isn't much to add about Invisible Children that Mr. Blattman and the ladies at Wronging Rights haven't already pointed out. But what are blogs for if not to add to an already rich discussion?

I must say that I'm interested in how a 44 minute long fictional drama program will explore the nuances of the conflict in Uganda. I may going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing it's not going to. If anything it's going to simplify and dramatize the topic of juvenile abduction and forced conscription. Of course that's what television does, but this problem deserves much much more than a movie of the week.

Some justify the methods of Invisible Children in that their films and campaigns make a complex topic accessible to young people and increase involvement. While this may be true it also teaches these young people to develop bad habits when it comes to development work, namely that style over substance will win the day.

What truly annoys me about Invisible Children though is it perpetuates the "best interests" theory of children's rights--that adults know what is best for children and will look out for their interests. It's a patronizing and condescending attitude towards a group of people who are often overlooked. Empowering children, recognizing their evolving capacities and allowing them a voice in defending their own rights is the first step in abolishing the deplorable actions of organizations like the LRA.

Not too Sexy For Rights

2009-03-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week the United States officially supported the UN Declaration on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. By officially supported I mean they called it a UN statement and stressed the human rights dimension (even going as far as to add human rights into the declaration's title, you know just so no one thought they were going soft on the gays).

The Bush administration passed on signing the declaration over concerns that it would override some state laws. Yes, the Bush administration was at one point concerned about preserving the law. The shiny new Obama administration, however, had absolutely no problem in signing the declaration since they understood, as any first year international relations student would, that UN declarations are not legally binding.

Snark aside, this is a pretty amazing development. Obviously, the DSOGI is a giant leap forward in human rights. It does quite a bit, although not nearly enough, in filling the lacuna left by the International Bill of Human Rights in its extension of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual and gender orientation.

More importantly though, US sponsorship of the DSOGI may signal a new attitude towards human rights and the UN. It seems to be a rather bold step towards defense of human rights, especially when fifty-seven nations have signed a document outright opposing the DSOGI. However, we should be reminded that the DSOGI is a nonbinding document, technically it requires no action on the part of the signatories (of course the US has had no problem in the past ignoring legally binding international documents either. Whatup Genocide Convention?). Obama's willingness to sign is more symbolic than anything else.

But how far will this symbolism go? Will a willingness to support evolving notions of human rights lead to support of established human rights? The US has yet to ratify for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ICESCR, the Apartheid Convention or the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. (The US also hasn't signed up for conventions relating to the rights of persons with disabilities, migrants, and those forcefully disappeared, but all of those of kind of newish and/or do not have the widespread support of the conventions listed above, so we'll give them a pass on those.)

It would be fantastic if the US started giving the green light to those conventions, but I wouldn't hold my breath. For one thing Senate ratification is notoriously difficult to get. It took nearly 40 years for the US to sign on to the Genocide Convention. If you need 40 years to be convinced that the eradication of entire ethnic groups is bad how long do you need to sign up for the right to rest and lesiure?

The Obama administration's overtures to accepting and enforcing human rights are indeed promising, but there's quite a bit of work to be done.

Highlight of My Day

2009-03-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

The very excellent ladies at Wronging Rights seem to be very impressed with my nomination for Favorite Extrajudicial Killing (X-Judy).

Needless to say I am extremely flattered.

In Which Our Hero Establishes Ground Rules and Then Proceeds to Break Them

2009-03-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog I had some basic rules in mind
1) Don't define any acronyms.
2) Don't get involved in shouting matches with other blogs.

Four posts in and I've followed those rules pretty well. If it wasn't for Elina Galperin over at the Foreign Policy Association's Central Asia blog we would have gotten to five posts. Unfortunately, a few days ago Ms. Galperin published a rather succinct post in which she perpetuates a common misunderstanding of human rights that demands to be addressed.

The misconception here is that economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) are "intertwined" with civil and political rights (CPR). This is just plain wrong. Right from their beginning the geneologies of the two sets of rights differ. Civil and political rights (CPR) are first generation rights, products of Enlightenment thought. They are, as David Kelley has expressed, freedoms from interference. For example, the right to free speech bans an individual or government from interfering with your personal expression. In contrast, economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) are second generation rights, they are freedoms to have things (Kelley again). The right to education or the right to livelihood require the allocation of resources to a person or group of persons.

When it came to enshrining these rights in international law the drafters of the International Bill of Human Rights rightly expressed distinction between the two groups, which is why we have the ICESCR and the ICCPR. Further proof of this distinction is found in Article II of each document. Article II of the ICCPR assumes that the rights enumerated within the document can be instituted immediately by legislation, however, the ICESCR commits States Parties to the progressive realization of the enshrined rights, based on the resources of the State. Again, we have a clear separation of the two sets of rights.

Ms. Galperin's greatest misconception, however, isn't the idea that two sets of rights are "intertwined", it is that ESCR should be established before CPR. The establishment and enforcement of CPR is the only way ESCR can ever really be reinforced.

Setting aside the inevitable arguments of justiciability for a moment, consider the case of Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation. The question before the Supreme Court of India was whether the BMC had the right to evict thousands of persons from the slums of Bombay without providing alternative accomodation. The petitioners argued that while they did not have to a right to live in the slums they had a right to live (Art. 21 of the Constitution of India) and could not do so if their right to livelihood was not protected. The Court ended up siding with the petitioners, deciding that the right to life includes the right to livelihood. This ruling could not have happened if India did not possess a robust democracy with a respected constitution and an independenct judiciary. India is not the only example though. The post-apartheid constitution of South Africa makes explicit references to ESCR. In fact, cases such as Grootboom and TAC have shaped the way the international community looks at the justiciability of ESCR. These example go a long way in proving that it is essential that CPR are preserved and respected before we can even begin to think about enforcing ESCR.

If we are going to see any real progress in the human rights struggle in Central Asia we need to keep this in mind.

The One with the Gacaca

2009-03-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Did I miss something? Is today International Somalia Day? The Enough Project's bloggers just couldn't get their fill today posting thrice (here, here, and here) and then Michael Kleinman tops it off by pondering the similarities between NGOs and Al-Qaeda. Not that I'm complaining, Somalia needs all the attention it can get, but I wish someone told me ahead of time so I could have cooked up a Somalia-centeric post.

Instead, the news coming out of Kigali is that Aboubakar Karemera, President of the Gacaca Court, was sentenced to 30 years for complicity in genocide. The gacaca courts are a form of community transitional justice in Rwanda. They are presided over by normal folks, not magistrates, and neither defense nor prosecuting lawyers are present. As Roger Alford writes:

[C]onfession is at the heart of the system. The accused stands before the community facing his own neighbors who lost loved ones at his hands. His genuine remorse is a tonic that heals. His public confession will result in a much lighter sentence and in many cases brings a significant measure of healing and forgiveness in the community.

This development with Karemera is interesting on a number of levels. A superficial argument will most certainly be made that the gacaca courts are largely ineffective if genocidaries are those running them. However, this position ignores a number of important facts.

First, conservative estimates place the death toll of the Rwandan genocide around 800,000. Because of the pure speed and volume of the killings it has been estimated that one in four Rwandans participated. Thus, it is virtually impossible to find someone in Rwanda today who did not play some part in the genocide. Therefore, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a genocidaire would be on a gacaca court.

Second, the gacaca courts are doing exactly what they are meant to--providing justice. As the numbers in the above paragraph suggest it would nearly impossible for all the genocidaries to be put on the ICTR docket. Since its inception the ICTR has handed down final judgements in 36 cases (7 of which are currently on appeal. By comparison the gacaca courts have handed down over 6,000 verdicts and heard over 1,300 appeals. Additionally, the courts did not let Karemera slip through the cracks. The charges against levied against him were relatively tame, possessing a firearm, holding a roadblock, and complicity in the murder of a Tutsi woman, but he was tried and convicted nonetheless. I cannot find any more detailed charges than those listed in the original article cited above, but it seems they were kind of small scale when compared to those of Akayesu for example. Karemera could have slipped away from the limelight, but the gacaca tried and convicted him, regardless of his position and severity of his crime.

It is especially interesting to look at the forms transitional justice takes in light of the ICC arrest warrant. I can't but help to recall a passage from Helena Cobban's book Amnesty After Atrocity? in which Cobban is interviewing the survivors of the Mozambican Civil War. Cobban asks the Mozambicans to recall which side of the civil war their neighbors fought for, but none of her subjects can remember. They had compartmentalized that part of their lives--that was war, this is peace and in peace we do not remember war. The truly startling part is that no UN agency came in and set up a tribunal to try war crimes, no third party set up a truth and reconciliation committee. Peace came and people moved on. Sometimes healing the wounds are more important than punishing those who inflicted them.

A Plea for Reason

2009-03-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

Michael and Michelle are at it again. This time the disagreement stems from future actions take in Sudan in light of the ICC warrant and the aid agency expulsion. Michael advocates a trade- the suspension of the arrest warrant in exchange for resumption of the aid agencies’ work. Michelle supports the arrest warrant and any and all complications it might entail for the Sudanese.

Both bloggers make a valid point. At this point the ICC warrant is nothing more than a piece of paper, academic interesting in the precedent it sets, but realistically useless. The ICC has no enforcement arm of its own and no country, least of all Sudan, is about to but Bashir in leg irons. Some have been quick to make the connection between Bashir and Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milosevic, but this is a poor comparison at best. By the time they were indicted both Taylor and Milosevic had tenuous control of their respective countries, in contrast it is all but certain that Bashir will be reelected this year. This is a man who held parties in the streets of Khartoum when the arrest warrant was handed down.

On the other hand we can no longer ignore Bashir's crimes. He is most undoubtedly guilty of reigning down death and chaos on innocent millions. Withdrawing the warrant would tacitly acknowledge the breadth of his control and the inherent weakness of the ICC. Moreover, it would be a discouraging blow to the development of international law in regards to impunity.

Despite these points I cannot help to point out that it is supremely presumptive to argue over who knows what is best for the Sudanese. One of the commentators to Michael’s post scolded him for criticizing people who had decades of experience in African policy. A hundred years of experience could not make them any more Sudanese than they currently are. In the end it is the victims who deserve justice, not the Western aid agencies or activists. Perhaps we should look to them for guidance instead of assuming it should go the other way around.

The ICC Shuffle

2009-03-06T09:17:00.001-08:00

During the State Department press briefing yesterday morning questions were raised on the US's response to the ICC. Mr. Duguid, may I have this dance?

QUESTION: The Chinese have come out and said that they would like the ICC to pull back on this and get rid of the warrant. What do you think about that?
MR. DUGUID: The – there are a couple of different moves that some nations have proposed. As the United States – as we noted yesterday, what we are looking for is a resolution to the conflicts in Sudan. This current move by the ICC has added a lever, if you will, with which to try and achieve that. Those who are guilty of crimes against humanity should face justice. The delay or deferment of the ICC warrant is not something that the United States is looking at right now.
Same subject?
QUESTION: Yeah, on this. I’m just – it’s added a lever?
MR. DUGUID: Yes.
QUESTION: How?
MR. DUGUID: The fact that he is now – the president is now a fugitive from justice is a lever for the international community, just as it has been in many other cases.
QUESTION: Well, he’s not – he’s a fugitive from justice in the eyes of the United States?
MR. DUGUID: He’s a fugitive from justice in the eyes of the ICC and --
QUESTION: Well, you’re not a member --
MR. DUGUID: -- all of the people who supply to that.
QUESTION: -- of the ICC, so I --
MR. DUGUID: That is correct. But it is still, for the international community, a lever.
QUESTION: You do not – so you’re saying that you recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC --
MR. DUGUID: We recognize --
QUESTION: -- over --
MR. DUGUID: -- that this is – we recognize that by the international community, this has been a move that will try and help resolve the problems in Sudan.
QUESTION: Gordon, sorry – just be specific. You recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over the head of state of a country that like your – like the United States, is not a member of the --
MR. DUGUID: I think I’ve given you my answer. We recognize that this move by the ICC and the members of the international community who support it is a move to try and resolve the problems in Sudan.
QUESTION: Yeah, but you say the United States considers him a fugitive from justice, but you don’t recognize that --
MR. DUGUID: I just said that he is a fugitive from justice under the court issued by – the warrant issued by the ICC. You are correct. The United States is not a member of the ICC.
QUESTION: And neither is Sudan, so why – so if he – if his own country doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of this court, how can you?
MR. DUGUID: There are a number of leaders or instances in which the particular country did not recognize the jurisdiction of a court, and yet the leader was brought to trial and was brought to justice.
QUESTION: Right, but in most of those cases, the United States had – in fact, in all of them, the United States has supported them. You know, this (inaudible).
MR. DUGUID: In this particular instance, you are right – you are correct. On our position, or our relationship to the court, that does not lessen the members of that court’s ability or determination to try and affect what they have said in --
QUESTION: Well, can someone check with the lawyers on this? I don’t understand how it is that you are – you are basically supporting, or giving your backing to the – to ICC jurisdiction over --
MR. DUGUID: We are recognizing that --
QUESTION: -- over a person who’s – over the head of a country that does not – that like yourself, doesn’t recognize the ICC.
MR. DUGUID: We are recognizing that the international community, through the ICC, is taking actions to try and help resolve the problems in Sudan and try and bring to justice those who they charge with crimes against humanity. The United States also believes that crimes against humanity have been committed in Darfur.
QUESTION: And what – and the appropriate way to bring to justice those who committed those atrocities is through the ICC?
MR. DUGUID: That is one way that a number of members of the international community have
moved forward.

So in summation- the US recognizes the international community exists. Which is a step in the right direction.

In the beginning

2009-03-06T09:12:00.000-08:00

Who am I? A man with a dream, a graduate degree in human rights and a background in development and law.

Why the blog? Because it's every mother's dream to say that their son is a blogger.