IJCentral: International Justice Central

This week, Malaysia joined the ever-growing group of states which have considered inviting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to visit (note: it is now apparent he will not visit – see below). With the exception of a tiny minority of world leaders, this would be just another state visit by just another head of state. But Bashir, despite his own protestations and those of his supporters, is not just another head of state – he is a leader wanted by the ICC for the Court’s trinity of crimes: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Regardless of whether or not Bashir is guilty of organizing atrocities in Darfur, he has been labeled as genocidal by the ICC and its advocates. This labelling aspect of international criminal justice, while rarely analyzed, is fundamental to its purpose. Politically, the perception or popular belief that a leader is guilty of committing atrocities may be just as important to the court as holding trials and achieving verdicts.

Labelling certain individuals as international criminals is intended to have numerous effects. It is meant to spread the popular perception of such individuals as illegitimate. Most importantly, it is intended to marginalize and isolate individuals who otherwise may benefit from a negotiated settlement.

The process and consequences of marginalization through ICC investigations and arrest warrants is not uncontroversial. Advocates argue that ICC indictments can isolate leaders both domestically and internationally, in large part by raising the costs of associating with individuals suspected of committing acts which violate the ‘conscience of humanity’. As mentioned previously, labelling individuals as international criminals is also an attempt to make leaders unfit for peace negotiations. Champions of international criminal justice point to the marginalization of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian crisis, barring them from participating in (and presumably de-railing) the Dayton peace talks.

Despite being indicted by the ICC, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has visited numerous states (Photo: RNW)

Critics fire back that this is politically naive. In the “real” world, even the most unsavoury of leaders must be negotiated with. If justice is pursued at all, it must come after negotiated peace. Critics also argue, rather convincingly, that creating a political vacuum by isolating indicted individuals assumes that peaceful leaders will fill the void. There is also the ever-present, if rarely confronted, issue about the relationship between isolating leaders through judicial and other means and regime change. Most importantly, however, critics highlight that leaders who feel squeezed may respond by lashing out at vulnerable citizens. Rather than simply marginalizing them, warrants may embarrass and shame leaders. As has been persuasively argued by sociologist James Gilligan, shame is often a key cause of violent behaviour. In the case of Bashir, following the issuance of the ICC arrest warrant against him in 2008, Sudan retaliated by expelling a dozen NGOs from Darfur.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive account of the marginalization debate. It is also not a debate which has an easy moral or political resolution. Regardless, it remains true that one of the criteria of the ICC’s success is the extent to which it is able to effectively marginalize those who find themselves in its cross-hairs. So, does the international travels of Bashir, of which the case of Malaysia is just the latest, mean that the Court is failing?

Champions of international criminal justice point to the exclusion of Ratko Mladic (R) and Radovan Karadzic (L) from the Dayton peace negotiations as evidence of successful marginalization (Photo: Telegraph)

There is little doubt that Bashir’s flouting of international borders is intended, at least in part, to illustrate that the Court is irrelevant and that Bashir remains one of the “normal” heads of state, able to travel freely, wherever he wishes. While it has now become clear that Bashir will not be visiting Malaysia, had he done so, he would be visiting a country which just a few short months ago declared its intention to become an ICC member-state. On previous occasions, Bashir has visited ICC states, including Kenya which is currently under investigation by the Court.

But there is a limit to all of Bashir’s flouting of the ICC. Luis Moreno-Ocampo was recently asked whether Bashir traveling abroad meant that the Court was impotent. He answered to the effect that, it was not, because Bashir is incredibly limited in his movements.

Bashir is not only limited in where he travels but also when and how he travels. For example, he is generally unable to attend any meetings or conferences in states where European or North American leaders are present. This is the case even in countries with close relations to his regime in Sudan. Many state leaders seek to avoid the embarrassment of finding themselves near Bashir whenever possible. Former Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for example, refused to sit next to Bashir at a meeting in 2009. In the case of Malaysia as well as numerous others, Bashir is able to save face by having his officials as well as those of the inviting state declare that he could not travel due to “other engagements.” Of course, these other plans only become evident once international attention focuses on the issue of Bashir travelling.

Bashir also often is only able to “dip in” for foreign visits, rarely staying for any significant period of time and sometimes only for a few hours. Like other international leaders, Bashir has shown that he can cross international borders; but he certainly hasn’t been able to do in the same style or manner. It is hard to think this behaviour isn’t linked to his fear of being detained.

Bashir and Chinese leader Hu Jintao. There are reports that Bashir will visit China in the near future (Photo: Sudan Tribune/Xinhua)

Further, if popular international support is another goal of the Court, then it can be proud of the international attention and outcry that accompanies Bashir’s travel plans. Every time he is inclined to travel to or is invited by another state, the collective arms of the international human rights community go up, pressure mounts on international institutions and local governments and seemingly within hours, there is a partial or full retraction of his invitation. If there isn’t, it often results in a heightened debate on domestic politics, as it did last year when Bashir visited Kenya. Tellingly, a Malaysian minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, was quoted by the Sudane Tribune as saying:

“There’s a big issue about him not being arrested even though we are not a member of ICC yet.”

There are likely to be many more trips, invitations, cancellations and revocations ahead for Bashir. Indeed, the Sudane Tribune reports that Bashir is set to visit both Iran and China. At the very least, the recurrent theatrics of these Bashir trips act as a reminder of the potency and widespread support of the Court and its goals.

Some will surely point out that this rosy way of looking at things ignores a central problem: states, including ICC member-states as noted above, continue to invite Bashir. Surely this indicates that these countries are either seeking to actively undermine the Court or will only support it when they are politically inclined.

It is rather obvious that the issuance of an invitation, even if revoked, is less than ideal for the Court. But it is important to remember that the ICC exists in a state of transition. The Court, as its supporters like to say – and rightfully so, is still young. The Court, as its supporters like to say – and rightfully so, is still young. Indeed, it has only been twenty years since the international criminal justice project was revived from its deep, Cold War slumber.

Many states appear to have sent official invitations to Bashir but, through less public channels, have informed Sudanese authorities that he is either unwelcome or could face possible arrest. This appears to be the case with the recent invitation to Bashir by Uganda for President Museveni’s presidential inauguration. Further, as the Court matures, it may actually be beneficial for it to have these relatively minor hiccups. As argued above, they help to consolidate support and knowledge of the ICC.

The consequences of marginalizing leaders through the ICC remain unclear. As mentioned in a recent post here, rarely is the removal of a leader – whether through isolation or through exile – considered in the context of long-term peace- and state-building. Nevertheless, if the ICC wants to be judged by its ability to marginalize indicted leaders – rather than the consequences of such marginalization – and thus shift the behaviour of these leaders, it’s record is nothing to scoff at.

Mark Kersten is the author of the blog Justice in Conflict

Evidently we are happy to work with Sudan’s Islamist regime as long as it restricts itself to killing its own people

It is hardly news when the red carpet is rolled out for an African trade delegation visiting London. But it is unprecedented when the delegation is led by officials whose president is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide against his own citizens.

Since a coup brought him to power in 1989, Sudan’s President, Omar Bashir, has been ethnically cleansing Africa’s largest country of those who disagree with his Islamist ideology. Now Bashir’s regime wants closer economic ties with Britain. It is also pressuring Washington to drop economic sanctions and remove Sudan from the list of states sponsoring terror. And it wants its debt cancelled.

Why are the UK and US governments even considering the wish list of a man indicted for genocide? Because Bashir’s good behaviour is required as Sudan goes through momentous changes. Next January a controversial referendum is likely to split Sudan in two, giving the country’s main economic asset, its oil, to the new South Sudan.

As the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office prioritise trade above all else, apparently there is no longer room for the protection of human rights. More than trade is at stake, however. The CIA looks to Sudan for intelligence on terrorist safe havens in nearby Somalia and Yemen, ignoring the inconvenient fact that Bashir’s regime shares a core philosophy with the Islamist militias it is supposed to be monitoring.

Many Sudanese are risking their lives to create a pluralist society, but the international community is sanctioning the actions of Bashir’s genocidal government. The UK must use its influence to hold Khartoum to the many yet-to-be enforced human rights measures in the peace deals and international conventions to which the regime is committed. Sudan’s version of political Islam despises free speech, independent thought, Jews, women, gays and, of course, moderate Islam. But evidently we are happy to work with Islamists if they restrict themselves to killing their own people.

Rebecca Tinsley is chair of Waging Peace.

source: The Independent

Team Obama has just offered Sudan’s genocidal tyrant one last olive branch. A hickory switch might work better.

This past Tuesday, when the punditocracy was raptly focused on the electoral results in Delaware and New Hampshire, the U.S. State Department quietly issued a policy statement on Sudan that offered the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir a path to escape sanctions and restore normal relations with the United States.

Why no fanfare? Perhaps an administration highly sensitive to accusations of equivocation in the face of evil was reluctant to call attention to a policy that emphasized carrots rather than sticks—or rather, to use the splendidly mangled metaphor of one administration official, offered to the regime in Khartoum “a carrot painted with a finer degree of granularity.” Bashir, who has been indicted on genocide charges by the International Criminal Court, doesn’t deserve a carrot. But the Obama administration has rightly concluded that absent strong inducements, deserved or not, from the United States and other key actors, the regime in Khartoum could well plunge Sudan back into a horrendous civil war.

In January 2005, the regime and the breakaway government of the south put an end to almost 40 years of war by signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The CPA gave southerners the right to choose independence or greater autonomy within Sudan. The referendum in which they will make that choice is scheduled for Jan. 10, 2011, and no one doubts that voters will overwhelmingly choose the former—if the referendum is held, and conducted honestly. But Khartoum appears to have no intention of permitting that. Oil has turned Sudan into a boom economy, and 80 percent of the country’s oil is located in the south. Moreover, the regime fears—with good reason—that granting independence to the South would embolden other regional insurgencies.

Suliman Baldo, a Sudanese scholar with the International Center on Transitional Justice, says that the Bashir government has been orchestrating a domestic media campaign to promote the fiction that all Sudanese seek national unity—and thus that a vote for independence is intrinsically illegitimate. Baldo and others fear that if Khartoum blocks or refuses to recognize the election, provoking the government of the South to unilaterally declare independence, the decades-long civil war that led to the deaths of two million people will resume.

The Obama administration has responded to this apocalyptic prospect with a belated, but very concentrated, diplomatic surge. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones have spoken with Salva Kiir, the southern leader, and Ali Osman Taha, Sudan’s vice president, urging them to make progress on the terms laid out in the CPA, which they have so far failed to do. President Obama announced last week that he would personally attend a U.N. Security Council session on Sudan chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the upcoming General Assembly meeting; that in turn has persuaded other heads of state, as well as Kiir and Taha, to attend. The administration has beefed up its diplomatic representation in Sudan, in part by naming Princeton Lyman, a veteran diplomat with long experience in Africa, to work with the two sides. And last weekend Scott Gration, Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, went to Khartoum to deliver the administration’s new offer.

That offer is at the heart of the strategy document released earlier this week. Gration presented the regime with four ascending “stages” of granularized carrot. The administration will immediately change the rules governing the export of agricultural equipment to Sudan, now tightly controlled by sanctions. “Previously there had been an assumption of no,” a White House official explained to me. “Now we’re going to shift to an assumption of yes.” This is, in effect, a gift for showing up—no strings attached. If the regime permits the referendum to proceed and respects the outcome, the White House will lift further trade restrictions (though not on the all-important oil sector). If Khartoum also reaches agreement on key North-South issues, including the drawing of boundaries and sharing of oil revenue, Washington will appoint an ambassador (the last ambassador, Timothy Michael Carney, was withdrawn in 1996 after Sudan was declared a state sponsor of terrorism). Only, however, if Khartoum also resolves the Darfur conflict does the administration promise to seek full normalization and the lifting of sanctions.

Administration officials present the package as an “intensification” of existing diplomacy, but that is slightly disingenuous. After long, and reportedly heated, arguments inside the White House over the proper balance between carrot and stick, officials have produced a document that is highly specific about inducements and carefully vague about threats. Despite veiled references to “accountability,” the statement is silent on the ICC indictments. And after much discussion over whether it’s acceptable, or effective, to address the North-South conflict separately from Darfur, the administration plan will allow Khartoum to profit from compliance on North-South issues, though Bashir wins the jackpot only for restoring peace to Darfur.

Some, though not all, members of the advocacy community are appalled at the decision to, quite literally, let the regime get away with murder. John Norris, a Sudan expert at the Center for American Progress and former head of the Enough Project, calls the package “unseemly.” Norris points out that in 2005 Western diplomats made a calculated decision to bless the North-South peace agreement even as the regime perpetrated mass slaughter in Darfur. Indeed, from the very beginnings of the killings in Darfur, in 2003, Bashir responded to pressure from the West by threatening to scuttle negotiations over ending the civil war. “Once again,” Norris says, “you’ve got a bunch of diplomats saying that this current situation is so serious that we need to ignore all this other stuff.”

So there is both a moral case and a strategic case against offering Khartoum goodies in exchange for behaving itself on the referendum. But if the derailing of the referendum really would lead to mass killing (and some experts I spoke to are skeptical on this score), then it’s patent that the moral imperative is to give Bashir incentives to behave himself, and to leave the issue of just deserts to a future date. The only real question is effectiveness. A number of studies (pdf) have concluded that marginalizing Darfur to get the CPA signed was a disastrous mistake that sent Bashir a signal that he could do as he wished with the people of Darfur. Why is it correct now?

Gration was foolish enough to say earlier this year that what remained in Darfur, seven years after the killing broke out, was only “the remnants of genocide.” He was quickly forced to retract the comment in the face of outrage from activists. But he was right. Civilians in Darfur still live in a state of terror, and millions remain displaced; but much of the killing now pits rebel groups, or Arab tribesmen, against one another. On the other hand, the steadily rising levels of violence in the South, much of it probably instigated by Bashir and his colleagues, could explode into the kind of mass ethnic reprisals provoked by the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948. As a State Department official puts it delicately, “There is a sense of urgency on both Darfur and the CPA, but there is a growing sense of immediacy on North-South issues.” The situation in 2005 was the exact opposite.

That said, Bashir must be made to feel that there is a powerful, and imminent, “or else.” So far, the Obama team has hesitated to make threats. Gration in particular has been far too willing in the past to accept the regime’s bona fides, as if unaware of the bland reassurances and bald-faced lies that frustrated his predecessors. Even now, he and his team may be putting too much stock in the influence of “moderates” inside the ruling National Congress Party, whom Western officials have been banking on—fruitlessly—for years. Bashir is likely to “accept” the State Department’s proposal, and then add onerous conditions of his own. A White House official insists that the administration is prepared for that eventuality, and adds that the ability to marshal an international response in case of rejection is “a very important part of the thinking” that went into the new offer. As with Iran, that is, the regime’s rebuff of what is seen as a fair offer will help the United States build the case for tougher sanctions than those Sudan now faces.

Will Bashir be suitably impressed by that prospect? Over the years, he has blithely ignored Security Council resolutions, sanctions, threats of prosecution, and global public opprobrium. He has learned all too well how to exploit the weakness of international diplomacy. Now he holds a lit match over a vast bonfire. Perhaps he fears the consequences of flicking it on to the pyre, but the irresolute response of years past have ensured it’s his choice—and his alone.

source: Foreign Policy

September 16, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – A meeting of the Arab league foreign ministers today endorsed a resolution reaffirming its position in rejecting the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir for war crimes and genocide allegedly committed in Darfur.

An Arab Ministerial Committee on the affairs of the Sudan expressed solidarity with Sudan and face of the ICC’s decisions and called annulling the warrants noting that Sudan is not a member of this Court.

The committee which is comprised of Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Qatar, Sudan, UAE, Oman and Syria slammed “attempts to politicize the principles of international justice and used in the erosion of State sovereignty , unity and stability”.

The ICC’s first-ever warrant against a sitting head of state was issued for Bashir in March 2009 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The second was issued in July 2010 on charges of genocide.

The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died since conflict broke out in Darfur in 2003, when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Bashir’s Arab-dominated regime for a greater share of resources and power.

(ST)

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A referendum on whether oil-rich southern Sudan breaks away to become Africa’s newest nation is scheduled to take place in less than four months. But with negotiations between north and south stalled over border demarcation, and preparations for the vote lagging perilously behind, the likelihood of the referendum proceeding as planned appears slim.

Analysts fear that any delay could trigger a return to the decades-long civil war that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2 million people, primarily southerners.

Sudan’s Islamist government, headed by President Omar al-Bashir, appears reluctant to let go of oil fields that have helped it survive U.S. economic sanctions first imposed in the 1990s after Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism. The loss of territory in resource-rich southern Sudan would have grave economic consequences for the north, analysts say.

According to Fouad Hikmat, the International Crisis Group’s special adviser on Sudan, the government says the referendum cannot take place until agreements are reached on issues related to its economic future.

“If these negotiations fail for whatever reasons, the referendum will be in jeopardy,” Hikmat said.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration boosted its efforts to mitigate the looming crisis, dispatching veteran diplomat Princeton Lyman to join U.S. special envoy Scott Gration in Sudan.

The U.S. government has long been committed to the right of self-determination for the predominantly animist and Christian population of southern Sudan.

In 2001, pushed by an advocacy coalition led by U.S. evangelical and African-American churches, former President George W. Bush made bringing peace to the region a foreign policy priority. His administration helped secure a 2005 peace agreement, which established a power-sharing government that was supposed to lead Sudan from dictatorship to democracy. After a six-year interim period of semi-autonomous-rule, the south was to vote in 2011 on whether to remain part of Sudan or secede.

But with international attention on a separate crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, and relations between north and south marked by mistrust, the benchmarks set out in the agreement fell behind schedule. In April, a national election that had been delayed twice, and that most opposition parties boycotted, handed Bashir—who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court - an electoral victory.

The ruling National Congress Party now says the referendum cannot take place until the border has been demarcated. But members of an 18-person Technical Border Committee representing both sides have been unable to reach a final agreement on the boundary.

Battle over resources

Stretching from the Central African Republic in the west to Ethiopia in the east, the 1,200-mile border region between north and south is among the most resource-rich and ethnically diverse areas of Sudan. Predominantly Arab pastoralists from north of the border who journey southward each year to graze their livestock fear that demarcation will prevent their seasonal movement.

The border committee has agreed on about 80 percent of the border, the Sudanese minister of cabinet affairs, Luka Biong, said in an interview in Khartoum. But the parties have reached an impasse regarding five areas where the majority of Sudan’s oil wealth lies, he said.

One of the contested areas encompasses the Heglig oil fields outside the border town of Abyei, where tensions between resident southern Ngok Dinka farmers and northern Misserya pastoralists are particularly high.

“Heglig belongs to the south. It is in Unity State,” said Edward Lino, a Ngok Dinka and former administrator of the Abyei area.

Gen. Babo Nimer, brother of the paramount chief of the Misserya people, was equally adamant: “Heglig belongs to Kordofan, to the north. Full stop.”

Oil exploration in Sudan began in the 1970s. According to a 2010 survey by BP, Sudan is the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, currently producing 490,000 barrels per day. The Sudanese minister of petroleum, Lual Deng, said that more than 80 percent of Sudan’s current oil reserves lie in the south.

Under the peace accord, the parties agreed to split the proceeds from the oil fields until the 2011 referendum. According to figures published by the Sudanese government, oil revenue accounted for about $2.8 billion of its budget last year and an estimated 60 percent of this year’s budget.

Deng, one of the few southerners with a ministerial position in the post-election government, said he fears that an immediate budget cut for the north would ignite a war. “In order to avoid conflict, we could look to a phase-out arrangement whereby you provide the north some [oil] until they get an alternative,” he said.

The pipeline to export southern oil currently cuts through the north, and the south has not begun construction on a pipeline that would avoid that route. But an interim agreement could help both north and south, Deng said.

“We can have a win-win,” he said.

Delay in vote preparations

On the logistical front, officials say that planning for the referendum is far behind schedule.

“We have not started,” the referendum commission’s head, Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, 85, said in his dilapidated law office in downtown Khartoum.

Khalil was appointed only in July because the north and south had been unable to agree on the composition of the commission. The secretary general of the commission, responsible for its budget, was appointed this month.

In the short time left before the referendum, the commission must organize voter registration across southern Sudan, a vast area desperately lacking in basic infrastructure. Khalil said that in addition to overseeing voter registration in south Sudan, his commission must ensure that voting centers are established in all areas where more than 20,000 southern Sudanese reside.

During the war years, those who could flee the fighting did. Many headed to the relative safety of northern Sudan. Others relocated to countries around the world, including more than 150,000 in the United States. The commission must ensure all of these people get the chance to vote.

Khalil said preparation for the vote does not fit in the remaining time frame. But rather than push for a delay, he said that for now at least, his role is to make it work.

Hamilton is a special correspondent in Sudan on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

source: The Washington Post

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan arrived in Kenya on Friday to participate in a ceremony inaugurating the country’s newly minted constitution, flouting international demands for his arrest on genocide charges.

Mr. Bashir faces two arrest warrants: one issued in July by the International Criminal Court in The Hague on three counts of genocide and one from March 2009 for war crimes and crime against humanity. In theory the warrants could be enforced by any of the court’s member countries, which include Kenya.

The charges relate to the conflict in the western Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated 300,000 people have died and more than two million have been uprooted by almost a decade of fighting between the government and rebels. Mr. Bashir denies the charges.

News reports said Mr. Bashir was escorted into Uhuru Park in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, by the minister of tourism, Najib Balala, to attend the ceremony marking the adoption of the new constitution, supposed to hasten democratic reform in Kenya, a nation generally depicted as pro-Western.

The role of the international court is particularly sensitive in Kenya because last April its judges authorized formal criminal investigations of the political leaders who organized the violence that convulsed the country after its disputed election in 2007.

Kenya’s political leaders had earlier refused to set up a special tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the killings, saying Kenya’s existing courts could handle the cases.

Under the Rome Statute establishing the court in 2002, which Kenya has ratified, member states are supposed to cooperate with the court, which has no means of enforcing its warrants. Nonetheless, Mr. Bashir traveled last month to Chad — also a member state of the international court — without being arrested.

The African Union, the continent’s main representative group, has criticized the warrant and urged that it be suspended.

The readiness of President Mwai Kibaki to receive Mr. Bashir drew strong criticism from Human Rights Watch, a rights advocacy group based in New York.

“Kenya will forever tarnish the celebration of its long-awaited constitution if it welcomes an international fugitive to the festivities,” said Elise Keppler, senior counsel in the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch in a statement on Thursday. “Even worse, hosting al-Bashir would throw into question Kenya’s commitment to cooperate with the I.C.C. in its Kenyan investigation.”

“Whether Kenya allows a suspected war criminal into Kenya is a test of the government’s commitment to a new chapter in ensuring justice for atrocities,” Ms. Keppler said. “The Kenyan government should stand with victims, not those accused of horrible crimes, by barring al-Bashir from Kenya or arresting him.”

The international warrants for his arrest have largely restricted Mr. Bashir’s travels to friendly countries in Africa and the Middle East that have resisted Western pressure to do the court’s bidding.

The celebration of Kenya’s new constitution, written to alleviate longstanding problems hindering good government for years, came after voters approved the document with overwhelming enthusiasm in a referendum earlier this month. It has been billed a potential turning point Kenya’s postcolonial history, addressing issues that have haunted the country since independence from Britain in 1963.

The constitution was drawn up after disputed elections in 2007 led to ethnically driven clashes that killed more than 1,000 people.

source: New York Times

KHARTOUM — Darfur’s rebel Justice and Equality Movement said Tuesday it was locked in fresh fighting with Sudan’s army, a day after the International Criminal Court charged President Omar al-Beshir with genocide.

“Early this morning… 60 four-wheel drive vehicles of Sudan’s army and militia obstructed JEM patrols near Kuma, North Darfur, JEM spokesman Ali Alwafi told AFP.

“The genocidal forces lost the battle and fled to Kuma. Our forces pursued them into the town and destroyed their military camp and captured 34 well-equipped vehicles,” he said.

The United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, or UNAMID, said it was aware of reports that clashes had broken out between JEM and the Sudanese army.

“UNAMID has received as-yet unconfirmed reports of clashes between government forces and the Justice and Equality Movement in North Darfur. Verification missions are planned to confirm these reports,” it said.

The Sudanese army could not be reached to confirm or deny the reports.

On Monday, the army reported clashes involving JEM, one of the most militarised groups in Darfur, and its soldiers in the strategic Adula region between South Darfur, North Darfur and nearby North Kordofan province.

The fighting came as the International Criminal Court announced it has decided to add genocide to the charges against Beshir, who is already wanted since March 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his role in Darfur’s war.

Darfur, an arid desert region the size of France, has been gripped by a civil war since 2003 that has killed 300,000 people and displaced another 2.7 million, according to UN figures. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.

source: AFP

The International Criminal Court’s judges on Monday charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with orchestrating a bloody campaign of genocide against Darfur’s three main ethnic groups, the first time the Hague-based court has accused a sitting head of state of committing the most egregious international crime.

The three-judge pretrial chamber issued a formal arrest warrant for Bashir—the second time it has done so—on three counts of genocide. They include the crime of targeted mass killing, the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of a target group, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. al-Bashir acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” the judges concluded.

The decision provided a degree of vindication to the United States, which has stood largely alone in characterizing the killing in Darfur as genocide. It also gave a boost to the court’s Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose pursuit of the Sudanese leader has generated intense opposition from other African and Arab leaders. Moreno-Ocampo suffered a setback this month when his case against another alleged war criminal, the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, was suspended for a second time.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, dismissed Monday’s ruling as a politically motivated effort to undercut prospects for peace in Sudan and vowed never to surrender Bashir. “We condemn this in this strongest terms; it will only harden our resolve,” he said in an interview. “This court’s objective is to destroy chances for peace in Sudan; we’re not going to be bothered by it.”

Moreno-Ocampo said he welcomed the decision, which essentially reverses a previous ruling by the pretrial chamber to reject the genocide charges. He said the new ruling honors the victims of the mass killing in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan. It may impose new obligations on states that have signed the Genocide Convention, including the United States, to cooperate with the court in its effort to arrest Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo added.

The court issued a previous arrest warrant against Bashir in March 2009, on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sudan, which has never ratified the treaty establishing the criminal court, has refused to surrender Bashir, who was reelected this year in a U.N.-backed election to a five-year term.

The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when two rebel groups took up arms against Sudan’s Islamic government, citing a legacy of bias against Darfur’s ethnic tribes. In response, Khartoum organized local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, to help crush the resistance and its followers. The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 civilians died as a result of violence or hardships brought on by the forced displacement of nearly 2 million Darfurians.

source: The Washington Post

On Thursday, the Great Lakes Policy Forum hosted a talk, “The ICC in Africa: Impartial Judge or Neo-Colonial Project?” featuring speakers Ruth Wedgwood, Director of the International Law and Organizations Program at Johns Hopkins University, Suliman Baldo, Africa Director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, and Charles Villa-Vicencio, Ph.D., former Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. Discussion focused on why frustrations towards the ICC have emerged, what the appropriate role for the organization is, and whether its involvement as an outsider can truly provide the reconciliation needed at the local level.

According to its founding treaty, the ICC would only get involved in cases when states are unwilling or genuinely unable to carry out their own investigations and prosecutions. Wedgwood noted that the language, particularly the use of “genuinely,” was prone to subjectivity and led to unprecedented actions, such as the warrant issued for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.

The African Union has been a vocal opponent of the ICC’s move to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir,.Villa-Vicencio said he sees this reaction as part of a growing antagonism in Africa towards international institutions. In this particular case, the AU had requested from both the ICC and the United Nations Security Council for more time to act before the warrant was issued. Despite these overtures, the ICC went ahead with the warrant, which, according to Villa-Vicencio, undermined the AU’s efforts in Darfur and role in the region’s peace process. Baldo, who spoke at length about the growing frustrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo towards the ICC’s prosecutions in the Ituri region, said that the AU rejection of al-Bashir’ indictment was not a dismissal of the war crimes committed, but an assertion that the AU should be at the center of the region’s security and peace efforts.

Not all of the ICC’s efforts were criticized. The panel agreed that the ICC indictment of Joseph Kony and top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army was essential for bringing the rebel group to the negotiating table. Baldo added that the international pressure led Ugandan civil society leaders to create their own set of ideas for seeking reconciliation and accountability—ideas that were incorporated in the Juba Agreement.

Villa-Vicencio suggested that in order for the ICC to achieve both justice and peace, it must increase dialogue with the AU and redirect its focus to building local and regional structures that can do the work of reconciliation themselves. Without local engagement, the ICC risks disconnecting from the very population for whom it seeks justice. He said, “Is there justice when the ICC comes in and local people do not understand, see, or feel the justice?”

As the event’s title suggests, the ICC often evokes impassioned debates, and Thursday’s event was no exception. To read more about the Court, check out Enough’s special page.

originally posted @ Enough Project

U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan retired Maj. General Scott Gration briefed bloggers at a round table Friday claiming there was overall “agreement on the overall broad framework on what we call incentives and pressures.” Asked about the SudanNow campaign he said “if anybody wants to come and help us, come on down.”

He also said he did not rule out meeting with Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. “I’ve not met with Bashir, nor do I have plans to meet with him. But I’m not ruling it out if we have to do it to move the process forward., Gration told bloggers.

Gration claimed “the president is totally behind me and is very interested.”

Enough Project Co-founder John Prendergast told ForeignPolicy.com:

[I]f the U.S. collapsed under the weight of perceived expediency and sold its moral authority for some belief that meeting the big man, the strong man, would actually be dispositive in moving the peace process forward, I think it would be a tragic mistake. It would undermine what leverage the United States has, which is rooted in part in moral authority and in part in its advocacy for those victims and survivors of the wars in Southern Sudan and Darfur.”

[We believe that U.S. policy, implemented by Gration, is] heading into dangerous territory in both Darfur and in the North-South process…[On the North-South issue,] a dangerous mistake that’s being made is to allow the U.S. government to be part of a process that includes the [ruling] National Congress Party, [Southern] SPLM, and United States talking about renegotiating elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. This allows us to be perceived as willing to renegotiate certains things that have already been agreed upon…instead of renegotiating things that are hard, we need to demand strict implementation [of the peace process] and work to build a multilateral coalition that is willing to impose consequences for non-implemention.”

For more reports on the Gration briefing go here.

originally posted @ Enough Project

This is recent post from our friend Bec Hamilton after recently returning from a month in Sudan.

Hi everyone

As many of you know I spent August in Sudan. Unfortunately this blog was a casualty of my time there - with the GOS having blocked this site inside Sudan I couldn’t access even the back-end of it to post updates. In many ways it was a blessing in disguise, both because I was so busy with interviews, and because I would have been too paranoid on the security front to write freely anyway.

On the outskirts of Kalma camp, South Darfur

I have so much to share, I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. . .

In Khartoum I did over 30 interviews, almost all of multi-hour length with people including (leader of the Janjaweed), Minni Minawi ( the one rebel who signed the DPA), Lam Akol (Sudan’s foreign minister for most of the period I am
writing on), Hassan al Turabi (hand behind the Bashir coup in 1989), Dr Ghazi (now head of the Darfur file),Rodolphe Adada (outgoing Head on UN-AU in Darfur)  - in addition to many others in government and civil society. I also caught up briefly with Scott Gration before he headed to Juba. I attended the second court appearance of Lubna Hussein - the journalist who faces flogging for the “crime” of wearing trousers, and got sprayed with tear gas following a football match.

After 16 days of being told by External Information, “come back tomorrow”, and right at the point I had decided I needed to head back to Nairobi because didn’t have enough money left to stay in Khartoum any longer, I was given a travel permit to go to Darfur the next day.

Cookers of recycled USAID tins: Sudanese ingenuity at El Fasher market

In El Fasher and then in Nyala I did interviews with all aspects of UNAMID, the few aid workers who were not too scared to speak, and of course with the people I care about most - the IDPs themselves. I also experienced the all-encompassing warmth of close-knit Darfur family life, staying at the home of a Darfuri friend. From 7 months to 70 years, we had grandmother, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, all living together. We ate dinner off one plate together each evening and slept under the bright stars of the Darfur sky each night. I’m not sure I have ever felt so much love concentrated in one place.

At 4am on Saturday August 22, I was woken by the street band of drummers, serving as an alarm to wake everyone up for sahur (meal before sun rises and fasting starts), on the first day of Ramadan. Like so many I met, I hoped that the holy month of Ramadan would bring peace in Darfur.

In the coming week, I’m likely to be posting a mish-mash of things - from photos, to ‘travelogues’ that I wrote up while practicing the fine Sudanese art of waiting (waiting, waiting), and summaries of the key issues raised in my interviews. As always, time in Sudan puts me through emotions of despair and hope, rage and joy, like no other place on earth seems to be capable of.

Thanks for your continuing readership,

Bec

I urge you to read Justice Richard Goldstone’s wonderful and concise overview of the state of international justice, published on the Op-Ed page of today’s New York Times. It provides an encouraging assessment of the remarkable progress that has been made on the international justice front, a reminder that all the efforts to cultivate international respect for the rule of law, spearheaded by a “mature global network of human rights organizations”, are bearing fruit and reining in the culture of impunity enjoyed by the most powerful violators of human rights.  Perpetrators of mass atrocities used to living by the rule of force and negotiating amnesties and personal benefits in exchange for peace are finding out that that route to retirement is no longer open for them - Charles Taylor is a stark example.  And the arrogance of Fujimori’s ploy to return to Peru for a presidential run, even though he was a fugitive from justice, led to his landmark trial that ended in a conviction and 25-year sentence for human rights violations.

Justice Goldstone is right to remind us all about the progress made in the quest for a world where justice and human dignity prevail.  Human rights activists and concerned citizens, often feeling beleaguered and powerless in the face of myriad conflicts, unbridled violence, and oppressive regimes, need to see that if we persevere there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Justice Goldstone was just awarded the MacArthur Award for International Justice, a well deserved recognition of his incredible career and accomplishments in advancing international justice, a list too long to enumerate in this post.  Skylight Pictures made a short film that honors Justice Goldstone’s role in the creation of an effective international justice system - it was shown at the MacArthur-sponsored award ceremony in The Hague on May 25, and you can see it here.

Now we have to get down to the business of bringing accountability for the abuses of rule of law and human dignity perpetrated during the Bush administration - No One Above the Law! And that includes President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan…

What was the UN Security Council (UNSC) thinking when it issued Resolution 1593 in 2005, referring the ongoing situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?  Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo took the case, conducted a 20-month investigation, came back with evidence, and requested arrest warrants - he did his job, in accordance with the justice mandate of the ICC.  At briefings he has subsequently given every 6 months, he has updated the UNSC on the progress of the investigation.  After obtaining arrest warrants from the ICC judges for Sudanese government Minister Ahmad Haroun, Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, and President Omar al-Bashir, he has consistently urged the UNSC and the international community represented at the UN, to execute the warrants. Instead the UNSC has balked at following through, and the African Union and the Arab League have rallied to support al-Bashir. 

Now there is even the possibility that the Obama administration might consider appeasing al-Bashir, a disgraceful approach if it happens (I suspect that Obama’s desire for dialogue with Iran, with its ties to Sudan, would have something to do with a rapprochement with al-Bashir).  So what did the UNSC and the international community expect when they asked the Prosecutor to investigate?  Did they have any plan for what to do if he came back with evidence of crimes against humanity?  They don’t seem to have thought that far ahead, or simply issued Resolution 1593 for political expediency.  But now they must act - we as global citizens must pressure our leaders to uphold the rule of law.  If you live in the U.S., write to your congressperson and President Obama and let them know you want the ICC warrants to be acted upon!  And citizens around the world, IJCentral members, send an email to your Minister of Foreign Affairs urging them to support global rule of law!

At a recent post-screening discussion of documentary film “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”, a Darfuri journalist said that amongst Darfuris, the surprise is not that the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President al-Bashir charging him with crimes against humanity in Darfur, or that al-Bashir expelled 13 humanitarian groups from the Darfur Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The real surprise for Darfuris was that humanitarian organizations and the international community seemed taken by surprise by al-Bashir’s actions after the warrant was issued. As the Darfuri journalist, Tajeldin Abdalla Adam from Radio Dabanga said, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo publicly requested the warrants; al-Bashir publicly said he would retaliate; so why wasn’t the international community making preparations to respond to this and to preemptively pressure the Sudanese regime to curtail its actions? Al-Bashir and his National Congress Party have been at it for 20 years, presiding over the tragedy of southern Sudan (2 million victims), arming and giving safe haven to the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda (20,000 victims, 1.5 million displaced), and now Darfur (200,000 victims, over 2 million displaced). How long are we supposed to wait? It is time for the international community to definitively isolate President al-Bashir, and make it clear to any of his potential successors that the rogue state tactics of the National Congress Party regime will no longer be tolerated.

Accountability is not something a constituency should have to beg from its government.  A lack of transparency and a paper trail of secrets is not something that people who fight for their country and defend their democracy deserve. Alas, these types of abuses of power and abstractions of the law have become so commonplace over the last eight years that it’s hard to remember where we started and how we got into this mess.

With the recent release of the Bush administration terrorism memos we are beginning to learn first-hand what many Americans and people around the world suspected had terribly gone wrong with this manipulation of governance.  During the aftermath of (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) the Bush administration decided it would be a opportune moment enact a complete deconstruction of social liberties and give itself the type of impunity only sought after by the types of despots and dictators that the American government has long vowed to dethrone and displace. 

In 1998 we saw the indictment of Augusto Pinochet by the Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzón for crimes against humanity. On April 7, 2009 the world saw former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori found guilty of human right abuses and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Finally, on March 4th 2009 the ICC issued an unprecedented arrest warrant for sitting head of state Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir on counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Obviously there is a strong trend afoot in the international community to stop the egregious abuses of power and the murder of innocent civilian populations under the threat of war. We are witnessing a gradual acceptance of an international rule of law, but there is still much momentum to be built.  Not that there hasn’t been an acceptance since the Nuremberg trials as a result of World War II or after the signing of the Rome Statue, but I mean the active and engaged acceptance that brings crimes to the surface of public opinion and furthermore its criminals to court.

In March a Spanish court has moved forward into opening an official criminal investigation against top administration officials in the former Bush administration including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former Justice Department Lawyer John C. Yoo for allegedly violating international law “by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba”.  This bold step is led by none other than Baltasar Garzón, and is a necessary beginning towards accountability for the United States. Although it may be unnecessary for the United States to have to export its alleged criminals, it does seem imminent that something must be done about them. The past eight years of American involvement in foreign and domestic politics has not only been an embarrassment but a potentially ruthless and criminal interpretation of the law and must not go unpunished.

Spain’s Attorney General has already encouraged Garzón to drop his investigation into the Bush administration and President Barack Obama has assured C.I.A. operatives involved in the torture described in the terrorism memo’s “that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal.”  Are the people of the United States going to step-up and make sure its leaders are accountable for their actions?  Are they going to vow against impunity and support a global rule of law? 

“We haven’t waited 17 years to get justice…we’ve fought 17 years to get justice.”  This quote from Eduardo Gonzalez of the International Center for Transitional Justice is in reference to the victims and members of Peruvian civil society that have been struggling since 1992, without pause, to have Peru’s ex-President Alberto Fujimori face justice for the human rights violations perpetrated during his 10-year regime. We met Eduardo in 2002 when he was working with the Peruvian Truth & Reconciliation Commission, and Pamela Yates and I were scouting to make “State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism”, the Skylight Pictures documentary about Peru’s 20-year “war on terror” with Shining Path, which covers the role that Fujimori played in gutting his country’s democracy in the name of security, committing the crimes that led to today’s guilty verdict and 25-year sentence.  Today is a big day for all Peruvians that want their country to be ruled by law, but Fujimori’s supporters will surely retaliate as they are a violent cohort.
It’s the first time a democratically elected Latin American president was found guilty in his own country of rights abuses, and Gisela Ortiz and Raida Condor (pictured here) deserve a lot of the credit for it, as they battled tirelessly for 17 years to see Fujimori face justice for ordering their brother and son killed in the La Cantuta massacre.  In Q&As for “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court” I often point to the example that Latin American civil society presents to the world: since the 60s and 70s, when the majority of the region was ruled by dictatorships, we have come to a present ruled by democracies.  It’s a remarkable achievement of what was considered to be an impossible task: namely, to have military leaders and politicians face justice for abuses committed against their own citizens.  To those who criticize the ICC arrest warrants charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and war crimes, saying that it will be a setback for peace, I say look at Latin America and the role that the rule of law played in the continent’s transformation to democracy.