Bitter Balance for International Justice

Conclusions from a leading expert on issues of impunity in conflicts (1)

Raymond Depardon · Rwanda. Kigali. 5000 prisoners are crowded together in a former Belgian prison, waiting to be tried for the genocide of 1994. © Magnum

At the time of ethnic cleansing, the international criminal justice is an excellent opportunity to fight against impunity in many societies. But ICJ is also accused of being politically manipulated. This virulent controversy suffers a gap that is now partly filled: a comprehensive factual analysis on the impact of international justice which shows that only 1% of war criminals are indicted by the International Justice. It is not the least of paradoxes that the law professor Cherif Bassiouni, who has dedicated his life to fight against impunity that leads to this result, after conducting an extensive survey involving hundreds of specialists from around the world for two years.

After scrutinizing mechanisms to fight against impunity in place between 1945 and 2007 in the 313 conflicts identified who made a hundred million deaths, the report highlights how, in the past 60 years, impunity remained the rule rather than the exception: 823 war criminals were indicted  in all by international or hybrid tribunals since 1993, most of which were for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia (about 320), the Timor-Leste (400) and Rwanda (79), for an average cost of 10 million francs per case.

We knew that international justice was expensive and was not intended to charge mass, but rather to charge cases of examples. The facts bear this out. These results are yet to be analyzed carefully, because they conceal as much as they reveal. If, for example, the conflict in Liberia has caused tens of thousands of victims and that impunity was the rule, the fact remains that Charles Taylor’s indictment, arrest and trial before the PCG Special Court for Sierra Leone, has enabled the Sierra Leone’s society to initiate a return to stability. Therefore, the effectiveness of an indictment can not be measured only in quantitative terms. Furthermore, as stated in Christopher Mullins’ contribution (2), 55% of conflicts have given rise to various measures relating to justice in the broadest sense, whatever the issues are essentially national trials, memorialization processes or purge laws.

Regarding truth commissions and investigating committees, the report has enumerated fifty only, despite the high profile given to some of them, particularly the one led by Desmond Tutu in South Africa – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Also the survey brings to light that only in 16 out of 313 conflicts, victims have received reparations.

But the most shocking figure is the changing ratio of military into civilian casualties in the space of a century: during the First World War, civilians “only” accounted for “only” half of the victims, while the percentage jumped to 90% at the end of the twentieth century. There is a disturbing transformation of the nature of conflicts. And that perhaps gives even more meaning to the need to prosecute the most serious crimes.

Since 1945, over the 100 of millions of deaths, Asia paid the highest price (46 million), followed by Europe (25 million), Africa (15 million), the Arab world (6 million) and Americas (less than 3 million).

Faced with the reality of almost total impunity for war criminals, Cherif Bassiouni stresses the need for a holistic approach in the treatment of serious violations of human rights. It is interesting to note that the debate in the late 1990′s between proponents of trial and proponents of truth commissions is now obsolete. Given the proliferation of internal conflicts and weakening of states, the two schools come together now to use both judicial and extra-judicial means for mobilizing traditional and/or innovative instruments in the crime management.

That is what Louis Joinet – UN special rapporteur for the fight against impunity in the 1990s – had conceptualized when he established the four pillars (right to the truth, right to justice, right to reparations and right to security) intended to strengthen the reconciliation process. But in the same way that politics is a performance art, post-conflict justice is a perilous exercise, forced to take into account what is just and what is possible – in other words, the combination of the ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility.

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(1) Cherif Bassiouni (ed.), The Pursuit of International Criminal Justice: A Study on World Conflicts, Victimization, and Post-Conflict Justice, 2 volumes, Intersentia.

(2) Christopher Mullins, We Are Going to Rape You and Taste Tutsi Women: Rape During the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, British Journal of Criminology  Volume:49  Issue:6  Dated:November 2009

The Invisible Human: A World Without Us

>> Haga clic aquí para la versión en castellano.

What if an asteroid hit the Earth and humanity suddenly ceased to exist? How would the Earth survive or thrive without us?

Human bustle is like footsteps in the sand. Everything we do leaves a spot – whether it’s making a cup of tea, switching on a light button, or using a computer. All these apparently ordinary and unexciting duties require energy, which often adds heating gases to our atmosphere and increases our waste. As the human population grows, the Earth is struggling to carry our weight.

In this Earth beat, have a look on Alan Weisman’s site and book The World Without Us and imagine how natural and built environments would look if we disappeared.

People probably won’t be disappearing anytime soon, but possibly there is way we can make ourselves invisible. Take it from Colin Beavan, who calls himself the No Impact Man. He spent an entire year trying not just to lessen his environmental footprint, but erase it all together.

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Dark Memories of the Dirty War

Chronicle of a valient journalist during the painful emergence of the Argentine dictatorship

“ Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Robert J. Cox (Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1976-1983)” by David Cox, Evening Post Publishing, June 2009

David Cox is the Robert Cox’s son, former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald and one of the few journalists courageous enough to report on the many disappearances and horrific violence that took place during Argentina’s Dirty War. David, 13 years old when his father and the rest of the family finally fled Argentina after years of close scrapes and tears, here presents the memoir of his father, writing in the foreword, admits that he still finds too painful to author himself. Punctuating his historical narrative of the escalating conflict with affectionate anecdotes about his large, tight-knit, and literary family, Cox the son wavers between nostalgia for the Buenos Aires of his childhood and flashbacks of the terrifying episodes that ultimately pressed the family to leave. But this book’s true focus is Cox the father, who emerges as an emblem of journalistic courage, suffering anxiety and asthma with silent tenacity while reporting on human-rights violations (and in some cases, causing the disappeared to be freed). An important primary source for Latin American recent history and an inspiring account to prevent future opportunists to take over again.

Robert Cox has risked his life to chronicling the early years of the Dirty War in Argentina (1976-1983), which has caused thousands of deaths. A few decades later he still can not write his own history or describe how he experienced this deadly junta. Now his son David does so, revealing how an editor of a small English-daily in South America, the Buenos Aires Herald, has courageously covered the kidnapping and murder that took place there when most his colleagues were silent.

Evolved into the race leading to the military coup of 1976 and in the chaos that has reigned later in Argentina, the book tells what led David’s father to write about the atrocities that were rampant. “This is the book that I never managed to write,” says the man 75 years in the preface. “Wounds are too deep so that I can write on this dark period.”  A plan backed by the military junta indeed encouraged people to silence real or perceived enemies, and caused that thousands of people were left in clandestine torture centers. Official figures set to have 13 000 people disappeared; groups working for human rights relate more 30 000 people killed instead. “Our family lives with this story for years,” said David Cox, 42, who spent his childhood in Argentina. “We all want my father to write his story because it affected us all one way.”

The Herald has been a pioneer in spreading the alarm. The military “issued him a warning to convince him to rally, but he continued to publish lists providing the names of the disappeared,” reminds F. Allen “Tex” Harris, an American diplomat who was in Argentina at that time. The Argentines went to the Herald when the authorities refused to provide information on their missing relatives, as the newspaper tried to lobby the government on them. There were very few people in the country who dared to speak. But the stories of Cox caught the world’s attention after he became a recognized journalist in the New York Times and The Washington Post.

For some time yet, the junta let Cox and The Herald go on practice their valiant journalism. “He printed a newspaper in English and as few Argentines knew that language, the military could not see him as someone threatening,” [...] “If someone criticized the lack of press freedom, he could always point to Cox,” added Harris. Cox was finally shut up in prison for a day after writing editorials urging the government to release imprisoned journalists. In 1979 he found himself forced to leave Argentina because of death threats against his family. David Cox describes, among other things, that he took different ways to get the school and that his family was traveling in an old Peugeot to avoid attracting police attention. “The feeling of terror now seems remote, but it is still in me.”

Despite all the risks he was taking, Robert remained “a very humble man” who simply reported what was happening in Argentina when others have refused to do so. “In his right mind, he did his job as a journalist.”

A concise, objective and engaging report on a very dark period in Argentine history. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in understanding this very complex yet so attractive country. A first class journalistic job, and homage to Robert Cox, an unrelenting and solitary fighter for freedom and the rule of law when people most needed someone like him.

>>Click here to translate this page to Spanish
>>Click here for French version

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French Police to Turn into an Occupation Army

Does the French police behave like an occupation army in the suburbs?

In 2005, just after the urban riots while he was head of the Ethics and Human Rights in Geneva police, a Swiss policeman spent several weeks in a police station located in the ‘93’, the Seine-Saint-Denis county (northern suburbs of Paris, «the most violent county» in France in words of Le Temps, from Geneva; not too far from truth). He looked over the French police and came to the conclusion that it was «an army of occupation. »

Yves Patrick Delachaux, turned into a novelist and screenwriter today, just wrote «Grave Panique» (Severe Panic) to put in picture his experience. The title was found one night when a patrol cop from the anti-criminal brigade was about to run over an old lady while he was driving too quickly and he exclaimed: «Je l’ai grave paniquée la mémé» («I’ve seriously terrified the granny. »)

His book speaks volumes about the state of strain existing between young people and police in the French suburbs, says Sylvain Besson, Le Temps correspondent in Paris. As well as the – now admitted without having to spell things out – complete failure of the policy implemented by Nicolas Sarkozy since his arrival at the Ministry of Interior (Home Office) in 2002.

On the ground, the healing is still far. Two days after his meeting on the theme «learning to live together» between youth and police, the Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux, filed a complaint for defamation against two young people who accused police of having hit a pizza deliveryman last August 9, in Bagnolet, in the neighborhoods of Paris. Aged 18, he died trying to escape a police check control when he drove a cross motorcycle – prohibited on public roads. In the suburbs, the dialogue of the deaf between youth and police continue to kill.

Yves Patrick Delachaux understood the problem at the first glance at the police station:

«A square blockhouse, everything is barricaded, wired. It is an occupation army. [...] An atmosphere of barracks, toil, suffering, says the Swiss policeman. We feel that it weighs on their shoulders.»

Policemen hide their function. No sooner have they arrived, than they just call for transfer elsewhere, and they never dwell in Seine-Saint-Denis itself. Delachaux declares that policemen reported him that saying hello to a group of young people means « go in search of clash», in the words of French policemen:

« The Swiss request to see the 4000 City of La Courneuve, become legendary since Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed he wanted to flush out and get rid of all the trash in the suburbs with a Kärcher [1]. On the way ahead, the tension goes up: it is said to be aware of objects launched from the rooftops, to be ready to call for help … Coming out of their car, policemen deploy themselves in skirmish, ‘as in Afghanistan’. »

When meeting a group of young people of African origin, the atmosphere is icy. Not a word, just dreadful looks. At back of the pack, Yves Patrick Delachaux launches a loud «hello» to the teenagers, which does not receive any reply. Back in the car, the blame rains from policemen: «Never redo it. You’re going to confrontation! »

The culprits in this system are not the policemen themselves, but «the immense organizational immaturity» of a structure where «all the weight and responsibility are placed on 22 years old guys», entangled in a policy of figures imposed by the government (The more they arrest, the better for the government).

The sad thing about this is that this doesn’t happen in France only (a country that proudly proclaims itself «homeland of human rights»). The welcome of customs police in many US airports is really humiliating – I would almost say violent. Not to mention the treatment given to Mexican «wetbacks». Or the discretionary raids by the Spanish police in Basque households.

[Read the full article on LeTemps.ch] in French only.

Related Posts:

Amnesty International reports the impunity of the French police
The road to nowhere

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[1] Kärcher is a well-known German cleaning machine using high pressure water. A Kärcher cleaner is therefore supposed to be powerful for removing dirt. This is quite the reason of the controversy, as Mr. Sarkozy compared some young people to dirt.

Guru of protectionism Emmanuel Todd urge us to protect and survive

(Translated from my French blog  “Résident de la République” )

The financial crisis is convulsing politics in unexpected ways. The triumph of an inexperienced black liberal senator in the US presidential election may yet be counted as the first surprise of many. What else could be in store?

Emmanuel Todd, the French historian, made a name for himself by predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has been canvassing into his crystal ball again. In his latest book, Après la démocratie (After Democracy), he brings to mind the alarming possibility of a post-democratic Europe reverting to ethnic disasters and dictatorship.

The author’s starting point is incredulity that a politician as “vacuous, violent and vulgar” as Nicolas Sarkozy could ever have been elected president. As interior minister, Mr. Sarkozy proved he was ill-suited to high office by inflaming social tensions during the riots in France’s troubled suburbs, Mr. Todd argues. Mr. Sarkozy’s first months in power have only confirmed this judgment. As incompetent in economics as in diplomacy, the hyperactive Mr Sarkozy is going nowhere fast, the author contends, rather like a cyclist pedalling away on an exercise bike.

Yet Mr. Sarkozy’s election is a symptom of the sickness of French democracy rather than its cause. Once, French politics was neatly defined by its ideological divisions: the Communists represented the secular, internationalist, working class; the Gaullists represented nationalist, conservative, Catholic values. But the collapse of religion and ideology has destroyed that framework, leaving behind a politically atomized society wide open to manipulation by the likes of Mr. Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Tough economic times will only tempt such populist politicians to stoke public fears of immigration and to adopt ever more authoritarian ways.

However, the author is equally scathing about France’s opposition Socialists, a party of cosseted bureaucrats who have betrayed the workers they once represented. French civil servants do not have to worry about the corrosive effects of globalization because their own jobs cannot be sent offshore.

Mr. Todd paints a picture of a collusive political-media elite that benefits from globalization while being disconnected from the people who suffer from it. As arrogant as the aristocracy on the eve of the 1789 revolution, this elite blithely ignores the views of voters whenever it suits them. French voters rejected the European Union’s constitutional treaty, but a modified version was later adopted by parliament. Britain’s voters protested massively against the war in Iraq, but the government sent in the troops regardless.

Ordinary workers blame cheap-wage China for killing jobs and compressing wages. Instead, France’s leaders scapegoat Muslim immigrants and target militant Islam, justifying an unpopular intervention in Afghanistan. Employees want Europe to protect their jobs but, in spite of his increasingly protectionist rhetoric, Mr. Sarkozy – and the opposition Socialist party – still adhere to the free-trade dictates of the EU and the World Trade Organization.

In Mr. Todd’s reductionist view, globalization is simply the exploitation of cheap workers in China and India by US, European and Japanese companies. He is therefore an unabashed champion of European protectionism. Erecting trade barriers would increase European wages which, in turn, would increase demand and boost trade, he argues. The “social asphyxia” that is sucking the breath out of democracy would disappear.

The British, whose very identity is wrapped up in free trade, will never buy protectionism, Mr. Todd suggests, but Germany and the rest of the EU could be persuaded.

At times, Mr. Todd’s anger outstrips his analysis. Too many questions are left hanging. Does globalization not benefit western consumers? Why would Germany, one of the great exporting nations, turn its back on free trade? Has Mr. Sarkozy not performed well in the crisis? But there is no doubt that the intellectual assault on free trade is intensifying. Mr. Todd’s book is a passionate assault in that war of ideas!

A tip: Do not run to buy it at the bookstore. Although some assumptions are attractive at first sight, the overall analysis, on an anthropological and demographic basis (Emmanuel Todd’s “primary business”), confines often to correlations too hastily constructed and argued quickly. Todd’s argument boiled down to something like: After democracy = “After sarkozysm” too simplistic to my liking. If you are interested in the future of democracy, rather try Wendy Brown, professor of political science at the University of Berkeley (Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics Out of Politics and History). This time, the analysis is all the more exciting and not a French framed one. Of course, keep in mind Colin Crouch’s classic Postdemocracy.

Related Posts: “After Democracy,” Emmanuel Todd: French Society in Crisis.

“After Democracy,” Emmanuel Todd: French Society in Crisis

I have just read the book. And it is a rather surprisingly pessimistic  –and surprisingly (to my mind) reactionary–   assessment of the state of politics and society in Europe.  In particular, Todd apparently emphasizes the socially stabilizing value of religion and calls for protectionist trade barriers.

Democracy is on the road to ruin. Religious values (Christianity, Communism …) have collapsed. Free-marketism and its corollary, globalization, are slowly destroying society. And to make matters worse, the French have elected as their leader a president who is “incapable of exercising power”. A man who, once in power, immediately aligned himself with the United States, like “a rat rushing to scurry onto a sinking ship”.

That, in a few words, is the thesis of this fulgent, fulsome, and flat-footed book, as Emmanuel Todd was caught flat-footed by the financial crisis that would “re-presidentialize” Nicolas Sarkozy. Nor did he predict that the “Bushist America” he curses would elect Barack Obama.

At once independent-minded and upset (emporté), Emmanuel Todd is not any more lenient towards the Socialists. He accuses the Socialist Party (PS) of having betrayed the values of the left by converting to capitalism. In Ségolène Royal’s popularity he discerns signs of “rot [décomposition]” in the politic body. And he blames “cynical careerism” for the promotion of the Socialist Pascal Lamy to the head of the World Trade Organization as well as that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as director of the International Monetary Fund.

This is a point to which he comes back often: the Socialist elites are of the same ilk as Nicolas Sarkozy. Historian, demographer and sociologist, he sees in their patent complicity the explanation for the ideological void that France has sunk into. With “a rise in the power of antidemocratic forces” as the consequence.

The exploration of this ideological void is at the heart of his exposition. The crumbling away of the great religious faiths, explains Emmanuel Todd, aggravates the decline of politics. But this decline is also due to a rise in the level of knowledge — a disturbing statement for those who believe that education automatically improves democracy. That was true yesterday. But times change. The increasing number of graduates with higher levels of education, notes Emmanuel Todd, has reshuffled the deck by creating a category of individuals impervious “to the strong affiliations that used to structure the nation, the public, the social domain”.

Add to this gloomy picture the temptation to fill the religious and ideological void he denounces with calls to reclaim identity: the castigation of Islam, the creation of a ministry of national identity, the “ethnicization” of a national myth… One begins to understand why this book is titled After Democracy.

Which democracy is supposedly at risk of disappearing. Emmanuel Todd does not rule out a “coup d’Etat”, the temptation to which he perceives in Henri Guaino, Nicolas Sarkozy’s special counsel. Similarly, he suspects the Socialists of wanting to “withdraw the right to vote from the people, or to at least to seriously limit its practice”.

At times one wonders if he is joking, but he is not the type. Emmanuel Todd is convinced that the free market and globalization, considered by France’s elite to be a foregone conclusion, have disintegrated French democracy.

The solution flows from the source: abandon globalization and institute a salvational protectionism at the borders of Europe. Thanks to such a reasoned protectionism, French wages, pulled down to the bottom by Chinese workers, will rise again. National cohesion will come out of it re-strengthened. And democracy —at last! — will find its colors again.

Sprinkled with cutting judgments, this exposition often vacillates between essay and satirical tract, in the process losing its force. Above all, Emmanuel Todd is too presumptuous. If the solutions that he argues for were the panacea, we would follow them without hesitation. Unfortunately…

Related Posts: Guru of protectionism Emmanuel Todd urge us to protect and survive.

Astonishing World: The Selected Poems of Angel Gonzalez 1956-1986

Milkweed Editions, 1993

Deep, lyrical… and ironic.

Now, I’m quite biased here. Ángel González is one of my favorite poets, so how I should not give this anthology 5 stars? So let me give a few reasons why this book is worth reading:

>The poem “Before I could call myself Ángel González”. Just for it, the book would be already worth buying. And if you are not convinced, read “Birthday”, too.
>Because Ángel González is such a different voice to everything else going on in Spanish poetry presently
>González’s detached lyricism is neither sentimental nor cold, striking a middle chord hard to find.

Mr. González has quite an intimate voice, which comes across quite well in this anthology’s translation.