Originally published on the CGS blog on June 26, 2014.
A few days ago, my mother, who of course reads my blog posts, excitedly notified me over Facebook that Meriam Ibrahim has been released from prison in Sudan. Last week I wrote about how the court’s apostasy accusation against Ibrahim, in addition to being an egregious assault on religious freedom, was also a case study in codified misogyny. This legalized chauvinism had forced a mother to give birth shackled to the floor and had sentenced her to death–but last Monday it seemed she’d been granted a reprieve.
The international outcry against the conviction’s abuse of human rights seemed to have been answered in the Court’s latest ruling. Jehanne Henry of Human Rights watch suggested that the international pressure may have had an influence on the decision. Certainly between Amnesty International, David Cameron, and Hillary Clinton, influential voices had raised a clamour worldwide in an international campaign demanding justice for the imprisoned Ibrahim. Widespread investment and concern for the fate of one woman had transcended borders and yielded a concrete and happy result.
Still, the international community rejoiced cautiously. US Rep. Chris Smith called the release a “huge first step,” but maintained that the next was putting Ibrahim and her family on a plane to the US.
His suggestion that more sanctuary would be required was dead on. Ibrahim and her family were arrested at the airport as they tried to board a plane to the United States, where Ibrahim’s husband is a citizen and where they’d hoped to start a new life.
She had been free for one day.
The latest is that Ibrahim is being held in the airport, where she is being questioned about her travel documents. According to Sudanese authorities, she has not been charged and is safe at present, but the American embassy remains highly involved in the case.
Two days ago I was ready to credit myself and over one million others who formed part of a vast campaign for social justice with the success of Ibrahim’s release. It seemed a victory for world citizenship; the vocal, non-violent intervention of a global community rewarded, injustice curbed and state sovereignty preserved to everyone’s satisfaction.
But in the wake of this recent arrest, frustration is high among those who thought they’d helped to win Ibrahim’s safety. I’ve seen calls in online reader’s comments for Barack Obama to extract Ibrahim–usually answered by the rational observation that he cannot infringe so dramatically on Sudanese sovereignty.
The United States’ opportunities for intervention are limited- it has imposed economic sanctions on Sudan since 1997 and has voiced its strong disapproval of the state’s human rights violations. The barriers of sovereignty continue to discourage further action from the United States, a country who, like Sudan, refuses to ratify international agreements that would protect women like Ibrahim from legally sanctioned misogyny. No lone nation can police human rights violations worldwide in a way that an international court or assembly could- if adequately supported.
While the United Nations laments the treatment of Ibrahim, it cannot do much more. In the absence of an international body whose global jurisdiction to address violations of human rights would be enforced, the international community is left with only one collective recourse: to speak out. We can continue to supply ample international pressure, to raise our voices until Ibrahim and her family are in a place of safety. We can continue to probe the wider meaning behind the accusations against her, which were apparently motivated by her family’s desire to seize her business holdings. We can bring to light this perversion of legislation and of religion for the sake of profit and refuse to let the system that tolerated it go unadmonished.
