This site makes extensive use of JavaScript, for the best browsing experience we recommend you enable JavaScript in your browser.
The Global Citizen: war crimes
Last night I attended a great event titled In Search of Accountability: Justice after Nuremberg. The panel discussion, organized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, focused on international justice and the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Michael Abramowitz, director of the Committee on Conscience at the museum, guided the discussion so that the three panelists would focus on the questions most significant to global justice: Are the mechanisms established in the first war crimes tribunals enough to deliver justice to perpetrators today? Since the Nuremberg trials, what new strategies have emerged?
On Monday, July 26th, a joint UN-Cambodian war crimes court convicted the first of several key players of the Khmer Rouge of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
More than three decades after Pol Pot and the leaders of the Khmer Rouge tried to turn Cambodia into a classless society based on agricultural communism, Kaing Guek Eav, commander of the movement's main torture and execution center, was sentenced to a mere 35 years in prison, for which he will only serve 19.
On Thursday, June 10th, the U.N.'s war crime tribunal on the Balkan wars handed down sentences of life in prison for two former high-ranking officers in the Bosnian Serb army, Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara. Popovic and Beara were convicted of genocide, a charge stemming from the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. The Srebrenica massacre was the largest mass killing in Europe since World War Two.
Additionally, another Bosnian Serb, former brigade security commander Drago Nikolic, was convicted and sentenced to a 35-year prison term for the crime of aiding and abetting genocide. Others on trial were acquitted of genocide but convicted for extermination, murder, and persecution.
On March 1, 2010 the trial of Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb politician, resumed at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 after being on the run for over a decade. He is accused of eleven counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Karadzic refused to enter a plea to charges and so the tribunal judge entered a plea of not guilty to all charges on his behalf, in line with the rules of the court.
In the International Criminal Court's short lifespan, its legitimacy has grown in leaps and bounds. The United States might not yet be a ratified member of the ICC, but our European friends and other allies around the world are members that are ready and willing to express their support of it to other countries.
Two reports were released by the United Nations on September 7, 2009 regarding human rights abuses, and possible war crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These reports, and top human rights officials stress the importance of reforming the DRC's judicial and security mechanisms. The focus of the reports is the period of heavy violence in late 2008 in the country's North and South Kivu provinces.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, announced today that in the next three years he plans to open four new investigations into war crimes committed around the world. He is currently looking into war crimes committed in Afghanistan, Georgia, Colombia, Kenya and Gaza.
It can no longer be glossed over that the government tasked with protecting people from atrocities in Darfur is the one carrying out the atrocities.
Today, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) reported to the United Nations Security Council that he will present a second Darfur case to the ICC judges that will implicate the "whole state apparatus" of Sudan in July.
Nora Boustany reported in Saturday's Washington Post on an important and unprecedented gathering of international war crimes prosecutors that took place last week in picturesque Chautauqua, New York.
Topics
- Arms Control (21)
- Become a Member (8)
- Capitol Hill (180)
- CGS Political Action Committee (PAC) (14)
- Chapters (5)
- Civilian Protection (211)
- Climate Change (83)
- Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) (3)
- Congressional Report Card (9)
- Current Campaigns (8)
- Election News & Analysis (103)
- Fellows (2)
- Gender Based Violence (21)
- Genocide Prevention (172)
- Get Involved (70)
- Home (4)
- Human Rights (274)
- Human Rights Council (50)
- International Criminal Court (312)
- International Criminal Justice (74)
- Law & Justice (319)
- Law of the Sea Treaty (59)
- Nuclear Disarmament (81)
- Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) (3)
- Other (44)
- PAC: 2010 Election Endorsements (3)
- Partners for Global Change (3)
- Peacekeeping (154)
- Prevent War (200)
- Rights of the Child Treaty (11)
- Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) (23)
- Support Us (7)
- Take Action (36)
- Tax Deductible Giving (3)
- UN Funding (118)
- UN Reform & Revitalization (52)
- United Nations (398)
- usaforicc.org (2)
- WFI (2)
- Women's Rights Treaty (CEDAW) (51)
Archive
- May 2012 (22)
- April 2012 (36)
- March 2012 (34)
- February 2012 (24)
- January 2012 (30)
- December 2011 (36)
- November 2011 (64)
- October 2011 (38)
- September 2011 (40)
- August 2011 (36)
- July 2011 (62)
- June 2011 (66)
