A Courting We Will Go

by Karl Horberg

category: Peace & Justice

Published November 20, 2009 @ 08:14AM PT

The Genocide Convention was nearing completion. The crime, the punishable acts, and the perpetrators had all been defined. It was now necessary to establish the entity responsible for prosecuting the crime.

In drafting the articles pertaining to prosecution and jurisdiction the triumvirate of experts took a rather expansive and radical approach. Article VII of the Secretariat draft recognizes universal jurisdiction by requiring states to "punish any offender under this Convention within any territory under their jurisdiction, irrespective of the nationality of the offender or of the place where the offence has been committed." This would mean that states are responsible for prosecuting perpetrators of genocide regardless of where the crime took place or the nationally of the perpetrator.

Article IX committed states to hand over all persons guilty of genocide to an unspecified international court in cases where the state was unwilling to try offenders or if the state had supported the commission of genocide. However it should be noted that Lemkin opposed the inclusion of the first clause. He argued that such cases were of lesser importance. He, rather presciently, voiced his concern about offenders escaping punishment because of the complex process involved in turning over guilty parties to an international court.   Article X was submitted in two drafts. The first gave the International Court of Justice criminal jurisdiction in all matters connected with international crimes. The second provided than an international court be set up to try the crimes of genocide. Lemkin spoke out against an international court, warning that such an action might be premature.

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A Holocaust Victim on Facebook: Crude or Compelling?

by Michelle

categories: Activism & Advocacy, Education & Engagement, The Holocaust

Published November 19, 2009 @ 11:44AM PT

Holocaust education is important. Adolf Hitler famously quipped, "After all, who remembers the Armenians?" - education and remembrance are critical for moving the world closer to the still-hollow concept of "Never Again."

Devotees of the anti-genocide cause, both educators and advocates alike, constantly search for new ways to engage and expand their audience. But is a Facebook alter-ego of a child victim of the Holocaust going to far?

A 22-year-old Polish man created a Facebook page for Henio Zytomirski, a seven year old Jewish boy who perished in a Nazi concentration camp. The page is updated regularly with brief posts from the child's point of view, as if he is reliving the horrific experience:

"Winter has arrived. Every Jew must wear the Star of David with his last name. A lot has changed. German troops walk the streets. Mama says that I shouldn't be frightened, and always that everything is just fine. Always?"

I've written in the past about my unease with victim identification methods of education and advocacy. (The tactic has been widely discredited as a pedagogical tool.) While I recognize the need for creative approaches to grabbing and holding people's attention on such a depressing subject, putting words into the mouths of child ghosts seems rather tasteless.

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Adolf Hitler, Soccer Coach?

by Michelle

category: The Holocaust

Published November 18, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT

If I told you that one in 20 British schoolchildren think Adolf Hitler was a German soccer coach, would you be a.) appalled, or b.) skeptical?

The results of a survey of 2,000 children in the UK revealed that while most students aged 9-15 recognized Hitler's rightful role as one of history's most nefarious mass-murdering war-mongers, 13.5% of them thought he discovered gravity and 7% thought he was Germany's national soccer coach. It gets better: 15% said that Auschwitz was a WWII-era theme park, and 6% though the Holocaust was a celebration of the end of the war.

The survey, however, was multiple choice, which really begs the question: Are the pre-teens a.) really that dense, or b.) smart-asses?

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Darfur: To the Victor Go the Spoils

by Michelle

categories: Darfur & Sudan, Refugees and IDPs

Published November 17, 2009 @ 04:57AM PT

Is the genocide in Darfur complete?

Michael Gerson's provocative op-ed in the Washington Post last week argues that Khartoum has essentially achieved its "policy aims" in Darfur by "targeting disfavored ethnic groups, destroying their way of life and forcing millions into camps," and is set to seal the deal with a newly-announced plan to close camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur early next year. The troubling report comes despite the fact that numerous international observers, including the African Union's own panel on Darfur, recognize that the security situation remains too volatile to allow for safe returns, and that issues of land and property must be carefully dealt with in order to facilitate peaceful repatriation.

But Khartoum is clearly concerned with none of this. As Darfur expert Bec Hamilton wrote, the desire to close down the IDP camps goes hand-in-hand with President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party's (NCP) hell-bent desire to "legitimately" win next year's presidential elections.

But IDP issue goes beyond the NCP's plan to, as Enough blogger Amanda Hsiao aptly puts it, "sweep the IDP problem under the rug in time for elections." Getting back to Gerson's point, permanently (and forcibly) resettling 2.7 million Darfuri IDPs to a location of the government's choosing could very well be a last grand stand in the effort to eliminate the influence, if not fully the existence, of groups presenting a threat to the NCP's rule.

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Darfur's Rebels Divorced from Reality

by Michelle

category: Daily Darfur

Published November 16, 2009 @ 04:48AM PT

Darfur's various rebel factions seem to be operating in more of a "chaos and havoc" mode than anything strategically oriented towards achieving their insurgent objectives. That is, of course, if you can even rightly call some of the faction "rebels," as they often appear more like common bandits with a steady arms flow, using a hollow ideology to somehow justify their existence.

Either way, their latest tactics reveal more self-interest than concern for the people in Darfur they claim to represent.

Serially-delayed multi-party peace talks due to resume in Doha, Qatar today were once again postponed, after the two largest rebel factions refused to participate. The branch of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by leader-in-self-imposed-exile Abdel Wahid has been busy threatening elections officials in South Darfur and attacking UNAMID peacekeepers, while the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) Khalil Ibrahim protested that the peace talks should first begin with him.

Ibrahim's arrogance conveniently ignores the fact that direct negotiations with JEM failed earlier this year.

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Three New (to Me) Internet Resources on Genocide

by Michelle

category: Education & Engagement

Published November 15, 2009 @ 03:15PM PT

For all of the students of genocide and conflict out there, here are a few internet resources that I recently stumbled upon:

The Peace Media Clearinghouse is a collaboration between the US Institute of Peace and Georgetown University's Conflict Resolution Program. The easily-searchable Clearinghouse offers "multimedia materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation," including items such as a documentary on child soldiers in the DRC and a computer game on nonviolent conflict management. You can search by country, region, language, subject, or type (photo, podcast, etc). The site even has an open-source element, allowing you to add or suggest new materials. (Hat tip: Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog.)

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Aid Worker Attacks in Chad a Sign of Worse to Come?

by Michelle

categories: Darfur & Sudan, Refugees and IDPs

Published November 13, 2009 @ 04:37PM PT

I'd like to think that there's a special place in a particularly fiery afterlife for anyone who attacks humanitarian aid workers.

The UN announced today that six international humanitarian agencies are suspending operations after a French ICRC worker was kidnapped and a Chadian national staffer with Solidarite was murdered. The suspension will impact service delivery to 37,000 Darfuri refugees and internally displaced Chadians, and comes after an increase in attacks in recent months. Since the beginning of 2009, 190 attacks on aid operations have been reported.

The culprits remain unknown, but could be any of the number of rebel factions (Chadian or Darfuri) or opportunistic bandits that roam freely in the Chad-Sudan border region. Sudanese-backed Chadian rebels are known to attack humanitarian convoys and compounds in eastern Chad, steal their vehicles, and drive them back to basecamp in Sudan; evidence of this was also noted in the recent UN Panel of Experts report on Darfur.

Attacks often peak in advance of another rebel incursion -- now that the rainy season is over, are Chadian rebels gearing up to make another pass at N'djamena? Or is this just a case of cut-and-dry banditry?

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