In the first few months of 2005, the Security Council considered granting the International Criminal Court the jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes in Darfur. The debate was tough at the time. The United States is not a signatory to the treaty that created court and it was unclear whether or not it would support the referral in the Security Council. The crisis in Darfur, however, seemed to inspire a brief détente between the United States and the ICC. When the resolution came to a vote, the United States abstained and let the measure pass.
Nearly 20 months later, we are seeing the first results of that decision. On Tuesday, the ICC's top prosecutor released the names of two individuals against whom his office has built a case. According to the recently released court documents, Ahmad Harun, a Sudanese government official, is alleged to have hired a janjaweed militia commander named Ali Kushyb to clear out villages and towns in West Darfur.
Though these are two relatively mid-level players, the investigation in Darfur is still open. The prosecutor has pledged to follow the evidence where it leads. Presumably, this means up the chain of command to more senior officials of the Sudanese government.
The Security Council referred the Darfur issue, along with the names of 51 suspected perpetrators, to the ICC in March 2005, after a UN inquiry into whether genocide occurred in Darfur found the Government responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommended referring the dossier to the Court.More
The United Nations Foundation (UN Foundation) and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, released today "Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable," the final report of the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. The report, prepared as input for the upcoming meeting of the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), outlines a roadmap for preventing unmanageable climate changes and adapting to the degree of change that can no longer be avoided.More
Diplomats from the U.S., Britain, China, Russia, Germany and France have agreed to start working on new resolution in order to pressure Iran to rein in its nuclear program.
The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the United States was willing to join in talks between the Europeans and Iran over the nuclear program, provided that Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activity.More
"I am quite confident that with your help we can maintain a peaceful, stable and violence-free environment in Liberia," Mr. Doss told the unit made up 105 female officers with 20 male supporting staff - the first largely female Formed Police Unit to be deployed to a UN peacekeeping operation.More
Two weeks ago, several hundred Brazilian peacekeepers raided the gang-infested sea side slum of Cite Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (You can read about the offensive here and here.) So far, the raids have successfully rooted out some of the major organized criminal elements of Cite Soleil. In yet another sign of progress, UN Peacekeepers have transformed the headquarters of the most notorious gang leaders into a free medical clinic for the long suffering residents of the neighborhood.
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In The New York Times op-ed page, Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes that the week-old UN sanctions on Iran are beginning to have its intended effect.
"Top leaders of the Islamic Republic, from Ayatollah Khamenei to Mr. Rafsanjani, have made it clear that they consider sanctions a serious threat -- more serious, according to Mr. Rafsanjani, than the possibility of an invasion. "In other words, what the unilateral and increasingly quixotic American embargo could not do in more than a decade, a limited United Nations resolution has accomplished in less than a month. And the resolution succeeded because few things frighten the mullahs more than the prospect of confronting a united front made up of the European Union, Russia, China and the United States. The resolution was a manifestation of just such a united front."Milani also states that the powerful insiders like Ali Larjani, the top Iranian nuclear negotiator, are in damage-control mode right now. Incidentally, this includes a series of high-level repudiations of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confrontational rhetoric about the Holocaust. But more to the point, the sanctions seem to have inspired the Iranian regime to contemplate what previously they had not. As Milani writes, the Ayatollah's foreign policy advisor stated forthrightly "that suspending Uranium enrichment is not a red line for the regime." So despite President Ahmadinejad's blustery proclamations to the contrary, the real power players behind Iranian foreign policy are willing to agree to some sort of compromise that includes suspension.
"I urge again that the Iranian Government fully comply with the Security Council as soon as possible" to engage in continued negotiation "with the international community so that we will be able to address and peacefully resolve this issue," he told reporters in Vienna, Austria, where he is on an official visit.More
In March 2005, the Security Council granted the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to investigate suspected war crimes in Darfur. According to a just-released notice to the press, the results of the investigation will soon be revealed. The ICC announced today that early next week, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno O'Campo will release evidence that connects named individuals to suspected cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
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