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Melissa Kaplan
Deputy Director of Government Relations
Phone: 202-546-3950 x 110
Contact Melissa
Melissa Kaplan serves as Deputy Director of Government Relations and WICC Coordinator at CGS. In this position, she handles government relations and advocacy work with Congress and the Administration on a range of policy issues; coordinates the WICC (Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court); and handles day-to-day management of CGS's Global Solutions PAC. Melissa previously worked for six years as a Government Relations Associate at the Society for Women's Health Research in Washington, DC. She has also lived and taught English in Prague, Czech Republic. Melissa has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of Connecticut and a Master's degree in Comparative Politics, with a focus on Russia and Eastern Europe, from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Recent Blog Posts
It was not unexpected, but the news was still dispiriting and depressing. Yesterday, the United Nation's Secretary General's top lawyer effectively put the brakes on a resolution which would have, among other things, urged the five permanent members of the Security Council (known as the P-5) to refrain from using their veto power to prevent U.N. action in situations where genocide or mass atrocities are threatening civilian lives.
Today, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced he would seek new charges against Bosco Ntaganda of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Ntaganda was already charged by the ICC in 2006 for the use of child soldiers in battle. Prosecutor Ocampo is now seeking to add charges of crimes against humanity for murder, ethnic persecution, rape and sexual slavery, as well as war crimes charges for "intentional attacks" against civilians leading to murder, rape, sexual slavery and pillaging. These alleged crimes were committed in the DRC between 2002-2003.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Court (ICC), met yesterday with Libyan officials who reiterated their refusal to hand over Saif Gaddafi to the ICC.
Saif, along with his late father Muammar Gaddafi and Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi, have been charged by the Court with crimes against humanity following an investigation last spring after the U.N. Security Council referred the situation in Libya to the ICC. The new Libyan government had previously pledged to work with the ICC and hand over the indictees so they could face trial in The Hague. Since then, however, Libya had pushed to keep Saif in Libya and try him there, while the ICC had insisted he be turned over to the Court.