Secret Conversations in Zimbabwe
Published October 29, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
I once had an extended conversation with a hotel bartender in Zimbabwe about the T.I. song "Live Your Life." It was last fall -- talks between long-time dictator and master-election-stealer Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai were stalled, human rights activists and opposition party members were disappearing left and right, a massive cholera epidemic was just beginning to make international headlines, and Harare looked like a ghost town.
And three Nobel Peace Laureates had just been denied entry to the country. The repressive police state was in overdrive.
So at the end of a long day, I was chatting with the bartender about movies, music, family, etc, and we discovered our mutual appreciation of T.I. and Rihanna. The song is a condemnation of greed and corruption, and he quickly started drawing comparisons between the lyrics and his own brutal government. I was petrified, at first -- state security officers were everywhere, frequently visiting the hotel and talking to the staff, and even following me throughout the day. I'd been careful to keep all public conversation benign and trust no one, and the bartender's forthrightness caught me off-guard.
I sat quietly and listened, occasionally asking broad questions but trying not to appear too interested. I was, of course, enthralled. He talked in hushed tones about how the delirious crash of the country's economy was straining his marriage, how his mother's house was burned down by youth militia in the post-election violence earlier that year, and how everyday is a struggle for survival. He said that no one dares to openly criticize the government because you never know who is listening, and he listed the names of friends and family who'd disappeared, or been murdered.
Why America Does Not Need a TRC
Published October 28, 2009 @ 08:30AM PT
What started as an extraordinary institution for extraordinary times seems fast on its way to becoming a pre-packaged catch-all for sinister deeds. Instant justice, just add water.
Ethan Zuckerman posted an interesting account of a recent talk by South African human rights activist-extraordinaire Paul Van Zyl on "Why America needs a TRC." But in the case of torture and the War on Terror, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would simply cement the notions of our past (and future?) leaders that they are, indeed, above the law.
The South African TRC was an extraordinary institution -- years of hearings and research uncovered and put on public display the insidiously dirty deeds of the Apartheid government, providing at least some measure of justice to its victims and in many cases, even years after the Commission ended, locating the bodies of missing loved ones. The TRC was uniquely South African, painstakingly developed by activists and scholars like Van Zyl and particularly suited for the negotiated terms of the country's transition to democracy.
Truth commissions more generally are often appropriate for post-conflict societies, where functioning judiciaries are notably absent and the scale of the violence is too great for even a healthy system to handle. As justice mechanisms, they often represent a compromise -- far less than many victims may want, but far more than they would get otherwise. Simply put, they are better than nothing, and the use of grandiose theoretical selling points -- about healing, reinventing, reconciling -- lead to overblown and unfulfilled expectations.
Advocacy, Super-Sized
Published October 27, 2009 @ 04:26AM PT
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is it worth if it's 7 feet tall and 10 feet wide?
The New York Times photojournalism blog, Lens recently did a feature on the project Congo/Women, a traveling exhibit created by the Art Works Projects. This exhibit, currently housed at the United Nations in New York, displays the devastating impact that decades of conflict, HIV/AIDS and rape as a war tactic have had on women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The difference is that the pictures are far from your traditional gallery size -- they are larger than life.
In the article, "Behind the Scenes: Suffering Writ Large," Leslie Thomas, the founding executive director of Art Works Projects explains that the massive images of the Congo/Women exhibit were meant to "grab the attention of those not normally concerned with human rights."
In 2006 and 2007 the Art Works Projects released another traveling multimedia exhibit called Darfur/Darfur that included huge projected photographs and music, documenting the lives of people experiencing the conflict in Darfur. The images were digitally displayed on walls of the venue spaces.
Though I have not had the opportunity to see these exhibits in person, after going through the Lens article and the Art Works Project websites for both projects, seeing the images was both moving and haunting. I can only imagine the effect they can have when they are wall-sized and impossible to miss. According to Lens, one of the current Congo exhibit portraits is placed right outside of the General Assembly chamber, and I cannot think of a more appropriate place for it.
I know that the Darfur exhibit made its way to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and that the Congo exhibit was shown at Senate and House office buildings earlier this year, but a part of me wonders if maybe a semi-permanent installation should go up in the Capitol Hill area of this nation's capital -- a daily reminder to both those who work and visit that the decision we do (or do not) make have a monumental impact on the lives of individuals, families, and communities across the world.
[Photo of the Darfur/Darfur exhibit in New York by the Save Darfur Coalition, used with written permission from the organization.]
Human Rights in Eric Posner's Lawless World
Published October 26, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Conservative legal provocateur Eric Posner has an article titled "Think Again: International Law" in the most recent Foreign Policy. If you are involved in human rights work, it won't make you happy.
Posner writes:
"Academic research suggests that international human rights treaties have had little or no impact on the actual practices of states. The Genocide Convention has not prevented genocides; the Torture Convention has not stopped torture. The same can be said for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a host of treaties meant to advance the rights of women and children. States that already respect human rights join human rights treaties because doing so is costless for them. States that do not respect human rights simply ignore their treaty obligations."
What is Posner's argument here? That laws that aren't followed 100 percent of the time should be disposed of? That genocide and torture shouldn't be illegal? If that is, in fact, what Posner is saying, his complaint isn't with international law, but law in general. After all, murder is illegal in every society, yet murders are still committed everywhere.
Posner goes on to explain:
"The evidence shows that human rights are best in those states that are wealthiest, leading many scholars to speculate that the best way to promote human rights is to promote growth."
Wealthier states are, on average, more likely to respect human rights, but Posner is assuming that economic growth causes states to respect human rights. There is a huge body of literature, including, most famously, Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, that concludes the exact opposite, that respect for human rights -especially freedom of expression- enables disaster-prevention, poverty reduction, and economic growth.
Then, there are the glaring examples of developed and wealthy countries showing little respect for the rights of people residing within their borders. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore might all be developed, but they're hardly paragons of good human rights policy. Economies can boom and skylines soar on the labor of exploited, brutalized underclasses, and in spite of authoritarian denials of civil and political rights.
However, countries like Singapore, representing the so-called "authoritarian development" model, and rentier states like Saudi Arabia -regimes that survive on income from natural resources- are exceptions globally. Most undemocratic countries are dismally poor.
As law, human rights have instrumental value to people campaigning for equality, exposing cruelty, and taking cases against their abusive and feckless governments to national and international courts.
Engaging with a Hostage-Taker
Published October 25, 2009 @ 08:59AM PT
Obama's administration finally, on Monday, October 19, unveiled its new Sudan policy As a policy, on paper, it sounded like there is something for everybody.
Many dictators in Africa had a good sleep that night. They never had such relaxing sleep since they saw on television some years back, one of their own fellows handcuffed and shipped to The Hague to stand trial on war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yes, every one of them saw his nightmare come true in seeing Charles Taylor, the ex-dictator of Liberia, hunted down, handcuffed, and taken to the International Criminal Court prison in the Netherlands waiting to be tried on crimes he had committed against his own people. A dictator in handcuffs was strong message to the rest of the dictators that, finally, accountability is on the way.
Omer Hassan Al Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, is a fugitive and wanted by international justice. The International Criminal Court has indicted him for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Light
Published October 23, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
Michelle asked me for a guest post on Darfur -- I agreed. And now I'm doing something rather underhanded; the classic bait and switch. This guest post won't be about Darfur at all. Partially because I don't have anything particularly new or interesting to say about Darfur.
And mostly because there's something else I'd much rather say.
Namely, thank you. To Michelle. And hopefully, because this is my guest blog, she'll feel duty-bound to post it. No matter how embarrassed she might be.
I'm a google reader junkie -- I get more RSS feeds than I know what to do with. All the relevant humanitarian blogs, articles from Reliefweb and IRIN, and yet still I rely on Michelle for somewhere upwards of 90% of all my Darfur news in particular, and genocide news more broadly.
It's not easy to blog every day, especially when you're blogging about such a difficult topic. It's even harder to collate and aggregate a massive amount of information, and make it easily accessible. If that was all that Michelle did with Stop Genocide, it would be more than enough.
Even more, though, I'd like to take this rather public forum to thank Michelle for changing my mind -- about the power and potential of advocacy movements, about the importance of addressing justice when discussing peace.
We've rumbled, and I can't think of any blogging I've enjoyed more. She's also funnier than I am. Which is painful to admit, but true. (For instance, she came up with the vast majority of our joint e-cards to dictators. My contributions were somewhat lacking.)
So, here's to Michelle. The best damn genocide-mass atrocity-crimes against humanity-Darfur blogger around.
Checking in with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
Published October 22, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
What hasn't gone wrong at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal*? No, seriously. It's pop quiz time:
Which of the following didn't happen over the last year?
(a) A corruption scandal over allegations that local staffers were forced to kick back portions of their salaries to senior tribunal officials;(b) Statements by Prime Minister Hun Sen suggesting (threatening?) that attempts to expand the the list of indictees were likely to produce another bloody civil war;
(c) Tribunal cursed to seventh circle of hell by very angry defendant;
(d) International Co-Prosecutor's resignation in protest after being mauled by Prime Minister's pet tiger;
(e) a and b.
(f) a, b, and c.
(g) I'm pretty sure all of that happened, even the totally ridiculous thing about the tiger.
The correct answer is (f). (Hun Sen does not, to my knowledge, have a pet tiger, but Ieng Thirith definitely cursed the whole enterprise during a hearing earlier this year.) And things show no sign of improvement, given the recent reaction to a summons for six senior government officials to appear as a witnesses in the Tribunal's second case. Hun Sen would apparently prefer they not testify. His argument? That the role of the officials in the process of overthrowing the Khmer Rouge and, nearly 30 years later, setting up the Tribunal, renders them ineligible to testify because "turning the plaintiffs into witnesses would doom the accused."
Quick show of hands: Who's convinced by this sudden interest in fair trial rights for the accused? I'm not, but I suspect that the defendants will be spared the presence of the ministers anyway. One of them has already indicated that he will likely be washing his hair that day.
The Tribunal's troubles are not only a problem for the victims, who have waited a really long time for justice, but also for the advancement of international criminal law. The Phnom Penh Post reports that a number of victims have raised allegations that they were subjected to forced marriages. Earlier this year, the Special Court for Sierra Leone handed down the first ever convictions for forced marriage as a distinct crime under international law. A decision by the Cambodian Tribunal's Trial Chamber to add forced marriage to the list of crimes against humanity under its jurisdiction could be an important step in the growth of this emerging legal norm. But it's hard to take seriously a court that is so obviously beholden to political imperatives, and the ongoing corruption issues will seriously hamper the Tribunal's ability to contribute to the development of international law.
