One of the controversies the ICC has had to deal with is the notion that it is "biased" against Africa. Even though most of the ICC's work to date has been in African countries, this is a pretty hollow charge; the reason that the ICC is operating in three of these four states is because they asked it to do so.
Much of the resistance to the ICC in Africa, particularly since the indictment of Sudanese President Bashir, has come from other heads of state. Hence the AU resolution last week rebuking the court, which was concluded in a closed-door session and evidently did not garner the support of all participants.
Discomfort with the ICC among Africans on a populist level, though, does undeniably exist, even if much of it seems based on misinformation (often peddled by state governments). To counter these negative impressions, the ICC is taking to the airwaves.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) today launches a series of radio programmes in the Central African Republic (CAR) as part of an outreach campaign aimed at informing the country’s population about the court’s mandate and activities.
The 13-episode series, which will be broadcast in the Sango language, is called “Understanding the International Criminal Court” and uses a question-and-answer format. At least 14 separate radio stations are expected to air the programmes.
Crank that dial.
(image from flickr user fatcontroller under a Creative Commons license)
Poverty tourism is getting a lot of attention lately. It’s not a new idea; we’ve been seeing slum tours for a decade now. People have a natural desire to see how the other half lives, and these tours make it happen in a safe and easy way. Opinion has always been mixed on where it’s exploitation, a lesson in empathy, or irrelevant.
A recent article Huffington Post, a truly breathtaking rant from Senegalese entrepreneur Magatte Wade, has brought poverty tours back to prominence and controversy. She thinks that the Millennium Villages Project – an experimental program developed by development economist Jeffery Sachs - is ill-conceived and that the tourism there treats Africans like zoo animals:
“…American professors spending tens of millions of dollars telling villagers how they should live their lives, so that American tourists can go and watch the new feature at the zoo in which the African natives are doing just as they are told by the American experts -- with the careful warning to the tourists not to contaminate the zoo display by feeding the animals…”
This was followed by several posts on Bill Easterly’s Aid Watch blog, where the tour operator responded to Wade’s criticism. The tour operator pointed out, among other things, that the brochure language that Wade was angry about had been written by inhabitants of the village in question, not by outsiders. That does put a damper on the zoo animals argument.
Today, the Christian Science Monitor weighed in, with a slightly broader look at poverty tourism as a whole. They quote Josh Ruxin, of the Millennium Villages Project, who argues that having visitors arrive as an organized tour alters the power balance in a positive way. “Tourism shows, 'This community has value, for which we will be paid.' It's a totally different way of thinking...”
My own take: I agree with Josh Ruxin. Shifting modes from gawking guests to paying tourists makes it clear to host communities that they possess things of value. Tourists in poor places are inevitable; well-meaning people want to learn about the lives of the poor, and the less thoughtful just want to gawk. Corralling those visitors into a tour uses their energy in a useful way.
The estimable Eve Ensler has been doing yeo(wo)man's work in calling attention to the horrific use of rape as a weapon of war in eastern DR Congo. Yesterday she wrote a forceful op-ed in The Washington Post on the subject, criticizing the UN for not doing more to implement a historic resolution passed by the Security Council last year that officially designates rape a war crime.
A few points: first, the passing of Resolution 1820 last year was itself an impressive accomplishment. That said, it was also embarrassingly belated. Rape has been a favored tactic of war criminals throughout history, and, morally at least, it has stood as a crime throughout.
Ensler is also right to bemoan the extent to which the promise of the resolution -- an end to impunity for rapists, the widespread stigmatization of rape as a crime of the highest order, an eventual eradication of the practice -- has been achieved in reality over the past year, particularly in Congo. Here, too, though, some perspective is in order. If it took the Security Council 60 years to classify rape as a war crime, it will prove even more difficult to enshrine this conclusion as a norm on the ground. This is not to excuse any delay in eliminating the climate of rampant rape that exists in places like Congo; but the reality is, in a world in which slavery, impressment of child soldiers, and genocide are still sadly prevalent, human rights norms can take a while to be realized on the ground. This is only more so the case in eastern Congo, where the world's most appalling levels of rape make it arguably the most difficult test case imaginable for such an ambitious resolution.
Ensler is rightly incensed that a firm system of accountability is not in place to punish perpetrators of rape:
Rapes continue to be committed with near complete impunity. While the number of criminal prosecutions has risen marginally, only low-ranking soldiers are being prosecuted. Not a single commander or officer above the rank of major has been held responsible in all of Congo. Rapes by the national army are increasing, too.
I couldn't agree more that more perpetrators, especially those in the higher ranks, need to be prosecuted. But to suggest, as Ensler does, that the UN should be doing the prosecuting misunderstands the confines within which the organization works. It is not mandated to conduct trials of Congolese citizens. That is the responsibility of a Congolese government that has, unfortunately, far too often turned a blind eye to rape conducted by its own soldiers and by the rebels it is combating.
Both the UN and other countries' governments should be doing more to press the Congolese state to treat the crime of rape more severely. Resolution 1820 was a milestone. More important, as Ensler so passionately argues, is making sure that its potential is realized on the ground, in some of the worst places in the world to be a woman or girl.
(image from flickr user Julien Harneis under a Creative Commons license)
Judging by the relative silence in western media, nary a peep does it make. But there are some striking similarities between the unfolding situations in Honduras and Niger. To wit:
Country A) Elected President wants to serve beyond the limits of his constitutionally mandated term. Country B) Elected President wants to serve beyond the limits of his constitutionally mandated term.
Country A) Elected President wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution Country B) Elected President wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution
Country A) Supreme Court decides this is not legal. Country B) Supreme Court decides this is not legal.
Here, however, is where the similarities seem to end.
Country A) The military, backed by opposition leaders, ousts the president.
Country B) The president declares a state of emergency, dissolves the supreme court and arrests the main opposition leader.
A, is of course, Honduras. B is Niger, where aformentioned opposition leader accused President Mamadou Tandja of carrying out the equivalent of a coup. And, it would appear, President Tandja is coming under fire from both the European Union and Economic Community of West African States, both of which have cautioned Tandja over his proposed term-extension. The African Union may also pile on when it meets in Libya for a summit today.
In Niger, the military has so far stayed neutral. But is this the sort of case where the military can act as an check on the power of the president and as a guarantor of the constitution? As usual, Paul Collier has some smart views on this sort of thing.
The only force that leaders truly fear is their own military. After all, a leader is far more likely to lose power as a result of a coup than in an election. Coups are now regarded by liberal opinion as an anachronism: soldiers should stay in barracks. While this is obviously right as an ultimate goal, it is too sweeping in the short term. Introducing elections before checks on power induces an incumbent to uproot the limited checks that might already be in place. This, essentially, was what happened in Zimbabwe, as Mugabe uprooted the tender shoots of the rule of law in order to steal elections with impunity. Ruling out any political role for the military may exclude the only force that might be effective against tyranny.
Despite being unfashionable, coups are undoubtedly treated by incumbents as a serious threat. But they have been an unguided missile, indiscriminately displacing both corrupt and decent regimes. To improve electoral accountability, we need to provide coups with a guidance system. For many years the EU and other international bodies have monitored the conduct of elections, declaring whether they were “free and fair.” However, these judgements have not been linked to any significant consequences. I want to introduce a red and green card system for coups according to the monitoring rules. A verdict of “free and fair” would lead to a red card: a statement that the international community would use its best efforts to put down a coup against this legitimate government...A judgement of “not free or fair”... would mean is that if the military launched a coup, the government would not be protected. Of course, a green card would constitute a signal: the international community would be inviting the military to take action.
Obviously, the situations in Honduras and Niger are different from Collier's ideal-type of coup. But something to keep in mind.
Excuse me if I find some irony in Ethiopia declining the Somali government's request to send troops, when all indicators point to the likelihood that Ethiopia already sent some of its troops "reconnaissance missions" over the border weeks ago. (Not to mention the irony of Somalia inviting back the very military presence that its citizens railed against for over two years.)
But really -- it's hard not to understand Ethiopia's reluctance. Ditto that of every other neighboring country to which the Somali government's request was made: Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Yemen. There's a reason that the only troops in the 4,300-strong African Union force in Somalia are from Uganda and Burundi, which share the important characteristic of not bordering Somalia. I don't think others will be joining them too soon.
Somalia's leaders are right in that their country is being attacked by "foreign terrorists" -- though the latter part of that label, referring to domestic groups like al-Shaban, is much more true than the former, even as the risk of Somalia turning into a global terrorist haven grows. But what makes this an issue that no one wants to touch is that it is also a political one: combating the terrorists also amounts to protecting the government, and, as well-intentioned as the attempt to stabilize the country's shaky state institutions may be, that amounts to taking a side in a messy internal political dynamic.
So the irony is painfully evident when Ethiopia cites as its reason not to (officially) involve itself militarily in Somalia the lack of an "international mandate." The reason the UN would be so ill-advised to issue its stamp of approval on a renewed Ethiopian intervention, or on creating a new peacekeeping mission, is exactly the reason that its neighbors don't want to risk getting involved: rather than halting the flood of violence, Ethiopian or blue helmet presence would only provide targets for extremists, as well as a lodestar for generating grassroots support. This explication, of course, will provide little consolation for Somalia's beleaguered government, which simply needs somebody to do something, and quickly.
At least 40 south Sudanese soldiers and civilians were killed when tribal fighters ambushed boats carrying U.N. food aid, the latest in a string of ethnic attacks threatening a fragile peace deal, officials said on Sunday.
Members of the Jikany Nuer group opened fire on 27 boats loaded with emergency rations destined for an area controlled by the rival Lou Nuer tribe on Friday, the U.N. World Food Programme said.
It's long been a rather obvious point among Sudan watchers that the country's fate is tied more along the North-South axis than to the more prominent (and no, not unrelated) Darfur issue. A referendum on southern independence is scheduled for 2011, and there seems little chance, at least in the current climate, that South Sudanese won't vote for separation. If another war is then in the offing, a strategy of the government is Khartoum would almost certainly be to arm certain tribes in the south, in an attempt to sow internal strife among their adversaries.
It's not a good sign, then, that the Sudanese government appears to have armed the group that carried out the raid on Sunday.
A day after representatives from more than 35 countries and international organizations met in Rome to discuss piracy off the coast of the Somalia, the UN today reports the astonishing figure that over 100,000 Somalis have been displaced in the last month. Even by the standards of Somalia's recent turmoil, this is a shockingly high rate -- the highest, in fact, in "many, many years." Amidst this gross displacement, all sides of the conflict have committed egregious human rights violations, with an appalling frequency of rape, impressment of child soldiers, and reckless shelling of civilians.
Compared with the widespread travesties faced by these thousands of Somalis, the international community's focus on piracy, whatever its impact on the global economy, seems almost an affront to human dignity. Yet there are signs that leaders in Rome yesterday understand the connection between Somalia's humanitarian crisis and the headline-grabbing antics of pirates. From Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini:
The minister said that piracy is linked to phenomena like the "criminality and infiltration of extreme elements easily recruited also by Al-Qaeda".
"Piracy is only the tip of the iceberg," Frattini said. "We are convinced that piracy is related to the political and socioeconomic crisis on land, not on the sea.
He said piracy and terrorism, illegal immigration, human trafficking are " a threat not only to Somalia but to the entire international community".
How they choose to address this larger problem is, of course, the big question. Pirate courts and an enhanced Somali coast guard are nice steps, but the iceberg is much, much bigger.
"We have no plans to go back to Somalia... [but] there are reconnaissance missions," Information Minister Bereket Simon told reporters.
"When there is a threat, you can send some scouts here and there," he added.
A few scouts here and there for Ethiopia, a few blocks here and there in control of the Somali government in Mogadishu. Meanwhile, Eritrea continues to deny the charge that it is arming Somali insurgents as "a CIA lie."
A few days ago, the African Union petitioned the UN Security Council to levy sanctions on Eritrea for its role in supporting and arming Islamist militants in Somalia. The BBC's correspondent calls this show of AU unity against one of their own "an unprecedented development," and Eritrea, in response, has lashed out at the organization, even saying it will suspend its membership.
An arms embargo already exists in Somalia, and the international community certainly needs to get serious about making it stick. But that means advising against reckless incursions by the Ethiopian military as well as ceasing Eritrean support for insurgents. Somalia cannot be allowed to become (again) the territory for an East African proxy war. Even if only for the relatively short-sighted cause of stopping piracy, the rest of the world needs to be paying attention to Somalia's other borders, as well.
Readers, this is a topic of interest to many of you -- what do you think? Sanctions on Eritrea? Censuring Ethiopian incursions? The responsibility of the government of Somalia?