ad hoc Tribunal reports are in

Check out International Law Reporter for the reports of the ICTY and ICTR reports.

Update on Rwanda's Claims Against France

As follow up on my prior post on Rwanda's claims that France was complicit in genocide in Rwanda, here is a link to a an article by Stephen Kinzer in the International Herald Tribune on the same.

Kinzer, writing on the release of a 500 page report by Rwanda, notes:

The report, commissioned by the government and prepared by a panel that heard from more than 150 witnesses, is not only a devastating account of France's eager participation in mass murder.  It is also the most provocative example in modern history of a victimized nation pointing a credible finger of blame at the supposedly virtuous West.

As I noted before, it remains to be seen how or if France will answer the charges, and which jurisdictions will pass judgment, French, Rwandan, or International.

ICC, Africa, and Europe

There was the Special Court for Sierra Leone; the ICTR for Rwanda, and now ICC indictments (or pending indictments) of a number of Africans, including the sitting head of state of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir.

A quiet critique (previously blogged) has been emerging that the ICC is using Africa as its laboratory. Another critique is that the ICC will never go after someone, let alone a sitting head of state, from a World Power.

A new twist on these ongoing critiques was in the news today with Rwanda accusing the late Francois Mitterrand and other French officials of complicity of genocide, as reported by Afrik.com and The Economist.

Background, via Afrik.com:

France’s backing of the previous Rwandan regime, led by President Juvenal Habyarimana, is regarded by many analysts as the nadir of its decades-long engagement in French-speaking Africa. The regime, dominated by ethnic Hutus,
created the conditions in which Hutu extremists orchestrated the murder of
800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a 100-day killing spree that marked
the apogee of years of systematic anti-Tutsi violence.

Mr Kagame, who came to power after leading a Tutsi rebel army that drove those responsible for the genocide out of the country, has long accused France of playing an active role in the killings.

Some of the accusations include:

France was aware of preparations for the genocide; that it participated in them by training Rwandan troops; that its own soldiers allowed the genocide to continue in an area they were deployed to secure a safe zone; and that they actively participated in the genocide elsewhere. (from Afrik.com)

So, it remains to be seen how a major Western Power responds to accusations of international crimes from an African nation. Will it co-operate in investigations? Will it operate under its own domestic law, under Rwandan law, under an ad-hoc tribunal, or what if it is referred to the ICC Prosecutor?

Africa and the ICC

From the Council on Foreign Relations via the Washington Post, Stephanie Hanson writing on the ICC and Africa:

The prosecutor of the ICC has encouraged self-referrals, and the only such
referrals have been from African countries. While the ICC has received some
1,700 communications to investigate alleged crimes in 139 countries, 80 percent
of these communications have been found outside the jurisdiction of the court.
This is "not a question of picking on Africa," says John Washburn (PDF) of the American NGO Coalition for the ICC. "The UN Security Council referred [Darfur], and the other countries came forward voluntarily." Some international law experts say the weakness of Africa's national legal systems has led individual countries to refer situations to the ICC. Most African states have yet to implement the Rome Statutes in their domestic legislation, write Olympia Bekou and Sangeeta Shah in
Human Rights Law Review, which is the first step toward retaining domestic
jurisdiction. "Strengthening domestic prosecutions so that the ICC does not have
to intervene should be the ultimate goal of every state," they write.

Rachman on the ICC

Gideon Rachman has a nice piece on the International Criminal Court in today's FT. It largely relates a lot of the "peace vs. justice" concerns which have been debated for awhile, notably by Doug Cassel.

The debate essentially says that ICC prosecutions, which demand justice and accountability, are a roadblock to peace because they eliminate the incentives of parties to a conflict to end it if they think they will be prosecuted, e.g. Joseph Kony in Uganda.

Rachman also notes a well-founded fear:

Some Africans complain that the ICC is using their continent as a laboratory.
For although justice is meant to be blind, it is clear that there are certain
countries and political leaders that are just too powerful to bring before the
court. There will be no prosecutions of Russian leaders over crimes in Chechnya.
And – despite the fears of American conservatives, which have led the US to
reject the court – the ICC is also highly unlikely to prosecute Americans.

While it has flaws, let's hope the ICC stays around as a valuable institution--if only as an expression of our collective values.