WORLD VIEW:International attempts to end impunity for war crimes have been under way for several years
THESE ARE not easy times for dictators and their henchmen. And this week particularly, it seems.
Historian Timothy Garton Ash describes what for democrats he calls a “cause for unqualified celebration” in “another step forward in one of the great developments of our time: the global movement towards accountability” – a lengthening procession of some of the planet’s most obnoxious persons to national and international courts, a reality that would have been hardly conceivable a decade ago.
The extradition to The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of Gen Ratko Mladic to face charges of genocide, extermination, murder and other crimes during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war came a day after the Egyptian military said it would try ousted Hosni Mubarak on charges of ordering demonstrators’ killings, and corruption.
Only two weeks ago, an arrest warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Col Muammar Gadafy, a son of his and the colonel’s brother-in-law, on charges of orchestrating systematic attacks against civilians that amount to crimes against humanity. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says they formed an inner circle that crushed peaceful demonstrations and ordered the use of live ammunition and heavy weapons against protesters.
Meanwhile, Ivory Coast has announced it intends to hand over Laurent Gbagbo, its recently deposed strongman, to the court. The Tunisian authorities have prepared 18 charges against former ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. He may have fled to Saudi Arabia, but Tunisians have a warrant out for his arrest, and they will be ready if they ever get the chance to prosecute him.
The court warrant for Sudan’s leader Omar Bashir’s arrest has been outstanding for some time, and there are proceedings under way against former president of Liberia Charles Taylor.
The attempt to end leaders’ impunity for war crimes has now been quietly under way, inadequately reported, at a lower level for a decade and a half.
The process has been most imperfect, and much criticised for its slowness and cost: the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established in the midst of the Bosnian war, has cost some $2 billion (€1.37 billion) so far, but has indicted 161 Serbs, Croats and Muslims, convicted 64, with 14 still on trial, while 13 have been transferred back to the Balkans for trial. Former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic died while on trial.
The tribunal, born out of a Nuremberg-inspired belief in universal values and international jurisdiction, spawned the subsequent establishment of the UN tribunal for Rwanda and mixed tribunals in East Timor, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Lebanon, and most notably the International Criminal Court itself, to replace the ad hoc nature of previous courts.
Its corollary politically is the evolving UN doctrine of “responsibility to protect”, the acceptance that national sovereignty cannot trump the obligation to safeguard peoples threatened by oppression from their own governments. Like the courts’ own development, the doctrine owes much to international guilt over the failure to act to break the siege of Sarajevo, and to Srebrenica, its 8,000 dead, and Ratko Mladic: the man who told his commanders to “shell them until they are on the edge of madness”.
In truth, of course, it’s impossible to say definitively that the threat of trial is inhibiting or has inhibited the likes of Mladic or Gadafy – only that the absence of any such possibility was a licence for impunity. Yet with every arrest and trial, the plausibility of that threat also becomes greater, and justice, even long-delayed, does help heal the psychological trauma suffered by those left behind.
Nor is the new justice even-handed or consistent. The courts depend on others to enforce their warrants, and cynical realpolitik realities play their part in protecting the more “valued” allies of major powers from its remit. Or dictators warn that possible prosecution may “complicate” transition, or they negotiate their departure under a promise of immunity.
It is a dilemma Gadafy may well present to the UN shortly, and is not easily resolved. The issue also complicated the peace process in the Balkans, with Milosevic, notably, complaining that promises of immunity had been broken. Mladic appears not to have got any such promises, however. And the EU rightly used the carrot of accession to force a reluctant Serbia to hand him over – a rare but striking foreign policy success and manifestation of its effective use of “soft power”.
It is worth noting that in this regard, Ireland played a small but significant part. I am reminded by Valerie Hughes, a campaigner here for solidarity with Bosnia, that our willingness with the Dutch to oppose a technical step in Serbia’s accession process because of its failure to hand over Mladic may have contributed to maintaining political pressure on it to surrender him.
It’s worth noting that in celebrating Mladic’s capture, the US state department, in an implicit tribute to the work of the International Criminal Court, pointedly argued that it “serves as a statement to those around the world who would break the law and target innocent civilians: international justice works”.
It might work even better if the US joined the international democratic consensus by recognising and signing up to the International Criminal Court. Over to you, Obama.
* psmyth@irishtimes.com