Blog Posts in International Criminal Court
5 Best Stories You Might Have Missed This Week
Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
Though George Packer’s column in the New Yorker this week doesn’t specifically mention the conflict zones Enough focuses on, his reading of President Obama’s foreign policy objectives certainly holds water as they pertain to Sudan and Chad, Africa’s Great Lakes region, and Somalia – oftentimes frustratingly so.
Eliza Griswold reported this week for The Daily Beast on the house arrest of the “Mother Theresa of Somalia,” Dr. Hawa Abdi, a humanitarian and trained gynecologist who has hosted masses of displaced people on her family farm since Somalia’s famine in the early 1990s. Dr. Abdi spoke to Griswold by phone while under watch by five members of the militant group Hizbul Islam. They had told her to stop talking on the phone, but “she said she had nothing left to lose,” Griswold wrote. “’This isn’t government,’ she said. ‘This is my home.’”
Ahead of the upcoming International Criminal Court review conference in Kampala, Human Rights Watch issued this statement (and a full report) about what member states should do to promote international justice during this moment of increased attention from around the world. One interesting point in HRW’s recommendations is that the conference attendees should promote efforts to strengthen national trials of crimes that fall under ICC jurisdiction. As HRW’s international justice director Richard Dicker said, “Advancing the fight against impunity means not only strengthening the ICC, but also bringing justice to the national level according to internationally agreed standards."
The AP’s Michelle Faul provided a useful overview of the controversy over the withdrawal of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo. The Congolese government is pushing for the force to be drawn down in time for the country’s 50th anniversary of independence next month and to withdraw completely by September. But with ample evidence showing that the Congolese soldiers are some of the worst offenders, the U.N. and rights groups are quick to warn that pulling out the peacekeepers will remove the one deterrent, however nominal, to the region’s numerous armed groups.
And on that same topic, in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor, the International Crisis Group’s Fabienne Hara argues firmly that the peacekeepers in Congo must stay – at least for now.
Clinton Discusses Sudan Policy on Meet the Press
Meet the Press host David Gregory closed out Sunday’s interview with Secretary of State Clinton with a question about Sudan, asking her to respond to a point made by Nick Kristof in a recent column: “When a man who has been charged with crimes against humanity tells the world that America is in his pocket, it's time to review your policy.”
Clinton’s response emphasized the need for Sudan’s Omar al- Bashir to be brought to justice, and she explained that she doesn’t believe that isolating Sudanese president will yield positive results. The United States is working closely with the U.K., Norway, and regional partners to manage what Clinton called an ‘immensely complicated’ and ‘explosive’ situation, though Clinton admitted that she isn’t satisfied with the results thus far. Watch the full exchange:
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5 Best Stories You Might Have Missed This Week
Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
Writing in today’s Washington Post, former assistant secretary of state Stephen Rademaker makes some interesting points about why the crime of aggression doesn’t belong in the ICC’s jurisdiction. I would beg to differ with Rademaker’s characterization that the Court’s current cases arise out of civil wars in Africa (the LRA, for one, ceased having any real political aims long ago), but he raises some pragmatic issues as ICC members prepare for a review conference in Uganda next month, where aggression is expected to be the primary topic of discussion.
On the heels of the Human Rights Watch report about a major LRA massacre in Congo, the New York Times published this slideshow of photographs by Jehad Nga from the villages where the killings happened.
The Lens blog featured a haunting series of photographs of Holocaust survivors, titled “One Last Sitting.” It is a dark, artistic series, just as photographer Maciek Nabrdalik intended in order to capture memories of the past through expressions on his subject’s faces. In the description of the project, Nabrdalik recalls the reaction of one woman, whose slow perusal of the pictures caused him concern that she was unpleased. The woman remarked:
“Don’t think I will give you a hard time. These are not our present portraits. You managed to take us back to the camp times. It’s exactly how it was.”
James Martone traveled to eastern Congo for the World Bank to document stories of people affected by the conflict there, an experience he writes about on the World Bank’s Conflict and Development blog. He explains that the work he and a colleague produce, including video, will accompany the WB’s 2011 World Development report, so we’ll be on the lookout. In the meantime, his post is thoughtful.
Hired to assist in the production of a new BBC documentary “The World's Most Dangerous Place For Women,” Judith Wanga has the chance to return to Congo for the first time in 20 years, since she was sent to London at the age of 3 with an uncle. Wanga’s trip, first to Kinshasa to visit family and then on to the eastern region for work, spawns a variety of emotions and thoughts that she writes about beautifully in this piece for the Guardian.
Sudan Is Still Up to No Good
.jpeg "Sudanese President Bashir")
This post originally appeared today on Foreign Policy.
The Lord's Resistance Army has come to Darfur, Sudan, and that is not good news for anyone. The Lord's Resistance Army is a vicious militia led by self-proclaimed messiah Joseph Kony, and though he does not appear to be with the contingent that has moved into Darfur, Kony is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most heinous war criminals still on the loose in the entire world.
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has long operated as a hybrid between a cult and a rebel army. Kony and the LRA originally sprang up in northern Uganda and waged a brutal campaign trying to overthrow that country's government. Millions of Ugandans fled the fighting, and the LRA engaged in virtually every depravity known in warfare. The LRA's ranks have been swelled with kidnapped child soldiers, girls are regularly treated as sex slaves, and innocent civilians are maimed and killed in a fashion too brutal to describe.
In recent years, Kony and his forces have fallen on harder times, though their brutality has not diminished. Dislodged from northern Uganda, Kony and his troops first fled into northeastern Congo and
then the Central African Republic. However, the Ugandan army -- with quiet assistance from the United States -- has remained in dogged pursuit of Kony and his forces. The LRA is a relatively small force these days, probably numbering less than 1,000 hard-core fighters who remain loyal to Kony, but it is still causing mayhem and suffering well disproportionate to its size. Kony and his men have killed around 2,000 civilians in the last year and driven another 450,000 from their homes. Although the Ugandan offensive against Kony has suffered some significant missteps along the way, it has put increasing pressure on the LRA.
Just this week, the Enough Project learned from multiple, credible sources in the field that elements of the LRA had crossed into Darfur. These forces appear to be seeking safe haven under the protection of the Sudanese military, and Sudan's notorious president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been a longtime LRA patron, so this does not come as a surprise. Clearly, Kony and his deputies believe that Sudan is one of the few places left where the Ugandan army will not pursue them, and they are likely increasingly desperate.
The even larger story is what all of this says about Sudan and Bashir at a time when U.S. diplomacy has been geared to striking a new tone in the relationship. Although Bashir has been eager to portray himself as willing to repair relations with the world after last year's International Criminal Court indictment, and the United States in particular, giving safe haven to the LRA is yet another slap at Darfuris, at Washington, and at fundamental human decency. The evidence clearly suggests that advance LRA scouts coordinated with Sudanese armed forces well in advance of the LRA's arrival in Darfur, and it seems implausible that local Sudanese armed forces commanders would welcome the group in Darfur without seeking approval from Khartoum, including Bashir. There are also suggestions that the LRA has received direct logistical support from the Sudanese army since arriving in Darfur.
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Photo: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir
5 Best Stories You Might Have Missed This Week
Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
The Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Congo’s capital of Kinshasa has been frequently featured in the media and in photo essays. Now they’re about to debut at the Berlin Film Festival in the documentary “Kinshasa Symphony” by Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer. From the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be a heartwarming story. (Hat tip: Africa Is A Country)
To mark the start of the 2010 TED conference this week, the social media blog Mashable featured five standout TED talks from years past. At Enough we constantly look for new ways to shorten the space between the people on the ground in the conflict zones where we work and the U.S. advocates who are dedicated to keeping stories in front of influentials. Writer and professor Clay Shirky’s talk about how social media can make history by empowering citizen journalists is especially relevant – one can easily imagine how the same tools used to report instantly about the 2008 earthquake in China, for instance, could prove powerful during Sudan’s upcoming elections.
Public Radio International ran this short piece by Katy Clark on how the challenges in Haiti have caused aid organizations to necessarily redirect attention away from other crisis zones, at least temporarily. Particularly in tough economic times, the give and take is inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate for places like Somalia.
In this Letter from Congo, the Washington Post’s Stephanie McCrummen describes an unmistakable feature of any eastern Congo cityscape: the wooden, manpowered chukudu scooter that “hauls vegetables in the good times and fleeing people in the bad.
On a related note (though I’m fudging the date because this is funny and timely, given the ICC’s recent prominence in the news), this clip from the Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Baldauf describes a new trend in Kenyan matatu décor. Whose face now adorns the back windows of minivan taxis, a place previously reserved for Barack Obama, American hip hop stars, and statements praising God? Here’s a hint: He’s everyone’s favorite ICC prosecutor.
