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Darfur: British Minister called for Cooperation with the Court in the context of finalizing the Deployment of Peacekeeping Troops; Press releases Human Rights Watch; Op-Eds

28 Sept 2007

Dear all,

Please find below information on recent developments related to the
International Criminal Court's investigation in Darfur and the Summit on
Africa at the United Nations, chaired by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

This message includes articles reporting on the British minister of state’s
call for cooperation with the Court in the context of finalizing the
deployment of peacekeeping troops; two press releases from Human Rights
Watch on Darfur, including one that lays out ten concrete steps to stop the
violence; and opinion and analysis including an article by Reed Brody from
Human Rights Watch and a New York Times letter to the editor by Jonathan F.
Franton, president of the MacArthur Foundation.

Please take note of the Coalition's policy on situations before the ICC
(below), which explicitly states that the CICC will not take a position on
potential and current situations before the Court or situations under
analysis. The Coalition, however, will continue to provide the most
up-to-date information about the ICC.

Best,

Mariana Rodriguez Pareja and Miranda Chiu
CICC Communications
[email protected]
*******

I. BRITISH MINISTER CALLS FOR ICC COOPERATION IN CONTEXT OF SECURITY COUNCIL
AUTHORIZATION OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL PEACEKEEPING PRESENCE IN CHAD AND CENTRAL
AFRICAN REPUBLIC

i. “US, France back peacekeeping forces to Darfur, Chad,” Agence France
Presse, 25 September 2007,
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYAuWJ5P1q15qptemD1GmdtAxZkw

“The United States and France on Tuesday pushed for the speedy deployment of
a UN-African Union force in Sudan's Darfur region and urged a ceasefire
during peace talks planned for next month.

Speaking at a rare Security Council summit on Africa chaired by French
President Nicolas Sarkozy, US President George W. Bush said he expected
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir and Darfur rebels ‘to observe a cease-fire
during next month's peace talks’ in Libya.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon secured Libya's agreement to host the Darfur peace
talks in Tripoli October 27 when he made a week-long trip to Sudan, Chad and
Libya early this month.

…. The US president and Sarkozy both also expressed support for a Security
Council resolution adopted earlier Tuesday endorsing sending a European
Union-UN force to Chad and the Central African Republic to protect civilians
from the spillover of the Darfur conflict.

… Meanwhile Britain's minister of state Kim HowellS underscored ‘the need
for justice’ in Darfur, referring to demands by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) that Khartoum surrender Sudan's secretary of state for
humanitarian affairs Ahmed Haroun, who is suspected of war crimes in
Darfur.…”

ii. “Top-Level Security Council Meeting Backs Enhanced UN Ties With African
Union
UN News Service,” UN News Center, 26 September 2007,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23973&Cr=africa&Cr1=

“Participants at a top-level Security Council meeting today on the
challenges to peace and security faced by Africa voiced support for
bolstering the cooperation between the United Nations and the African Union
(AU).

The heads of State or government or the senior ministers of the Council's 15
members, as well as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and AU Commission
Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konaré, discussed how to improve peace and security
on a continent often beset by conflicts and crises.

….. Kim Howell, Minister of State for the United Kingdom, said that Sudan
must cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC). "Let's not
forget the need for justice," he said, adding that "the age of impunity is
dead and there can be no impunity in Darfur."

Speaking in his national capacity, Mr. Sarkozy also stressed the importance
of justice and ‘respect for humans.’ He noted that ‘we must be completely
categorical about the respect of human rights, on the progression of the
rule of law, the need for justice and on punishing criminals.’…”

II. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: “TEN STEPS FOR DARFUR” AND “SUMMIT ON AFRICA SHOULD
NOT OVERLOOK JUSTICE”

i. “UN: Rights Council Should Set Benchmarks for Sudan- Darfur Experts’
Report Is Basis for Assessing Progress,” Human Rights Watch (press release),
24 September 2007,
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/09/24/sudan16943.htm

“The United Nations Human Rights Council should hold Sudan to its
commitments on Darfur by monitoring its implementation of 10 concrete steps,
Human Rights Watch said in a paper released today. A group of experts on
Darfur, appointed by the council, presented its interim report to the
council on September 24, 2007.

…. ‘The Human Rights Council should insist that Sudan’s actions match its
words on Darfur,’ said Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights
Watch. ‘Rather than just making promises, Sudan should take steps that
result in real changes on the ground.’

In the briefing paper, ‘Ten Steps for Darfur,’ Human Rights Watch outlines
actions drawn from the recommendations compiled by the group of experts that
would contribute to improving the human rights situation in Darfur. The
Sudanese government has, as described in the paper, already agreed to
undertake many of the steps, but has yet to act. The Human Rights Council
should call on Sudan to take these 10 concrete steps, and should indicate
its intention to evaluate Sudan’s implementation of these measures when the
group of experts reports in December.

The 10 steps are:

1. Publish and disseminate orders prohibiting the targeting of civilians
and civilian property and indiscriminate attacks;
2. Enforce orders prohibiting the targeting of civilians and civilian
property and indiscriminate attacks;
3. Vet all appointments to public office on human rights grounds, and
remove Ahmed Haroun, who has been indicted by the International Criminal
Court, from all posts;
4. Publicize and enforce a policy of zero tolerance for violence against
women;
5. Provide an up-to-date list of detainees and where they are held, and
ensure that humanitarian agencies have confidential access to all detainees;

6. Cease any use in Darfur of military airplanes, helicopters or vehicles
painted white or otherwise mimicking UN or humanitarian organizations;
7. Issue a blanket waiver of legal immunities for war crimes and serious
violations of human rights;
8. Fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court, and surrender
two suspects now subject to arrest warrants;
9. Fully cooperate with the African Union mission and the deployment of
the new UN-AU force, including issuance of expedited visas and clearance for
vehicles and equipment; and,
10. Issue a standing invitation to all UN human rights mechanisms and give
these mechanisms full and unimpeded access.

Each of these steps can and should be accomplished before the council’s
December session. Together, the steps can be used to assess the extent of
Sudan’s commitment to addressing the human rights crisis in Darfur.

‘The Human Rights Council should make clear that it can tell whether Sudan
is taking concrete steps to improve the situation in Darfur or not,’ Hicks
said. ‘The council needs to hold Sudan accountable if it fails to honor its
commitments.”

ii. “UN: Summit on Africa Should Not Overlook Justice,” Human Rights Watch
(press release), 25 September 2007,
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/09/25/africa16942.htm

“United Nations Security Council leaders meeting today to discuss peace and
security in Africa should not leave justice off the agenda, Human Rights
Watch said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is chairing the meeting this
afternoon in New York.

‘Justice is an indispensable part of lasting peace and security,’ said
Richard Dicker, International Justice Director at Human Rights Watch. ‘As
Security Council leaders grapple with these difficult issues, they must
reinforce the need for justice as a key component of long-term stability.’

Experience has shown that failure to hold perpetrators of the most serious
international crimes to account is destabilizing and undercuts long-term
prospects for peace, Human Rights Watch said. Time and again, impunity for
grave crimes has resulted in outbreaks of violence from groups whose
grievances have never been addressed. In Burundi, for example, the Hutu who
received no justice for the mass slaughter by Tutsi in 1972 joined all the
more readily in attacking Tutsi in 1993. In Sierra Leone, the amnesty
granted under the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord was followed by further war crimes,
including rampant sexual assault.

‘Accountability must not be left off the agenda during the Security Council
talks,’ said Dicker. ‘Ending impunity for war crimes and crimes against
humanity is crucial to building the rule of law and avoiding cycles of
violence. It also sends the message to would-be perpetrators that no one is
above the law.’

International law requires accountability for the most serious crimes. The
Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court (ICC) require fair prosecutions for crimes
against humanity and war crimes.

Several important justice initiatives in Africa require sustained support by
the international community. These include the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, efforts to bring
former Chadian President Hissène Habré to justice, and domestic
accountability efforts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
elsewhere.

The ICC is conducting investigations into situations in four African
countries: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur in Sudan,
and the Central African Republic. All of these countries except Sudan
referred situations on their territory to the ICC prosecutor themselves
because of difficulties they had in holding perpetrators to account
nationally. In March 2005, the Security Council, in resolution 1593,
referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC prosecutor and imposed an
obligation on Sudan to cooperate fully with the court’s investigations. The
ICC has outstanding arrest warrants issued for suspects in Uganda and
Darfur, and is continuing investigations in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo.

‘As a part of underscoring their broad commitment to justice, Security
Council members need to support the ICC’s efforts in Africa,’ said Dicker.
‘They also must ensure that countries like Sudan cooperate with the court.’

III. OPINION AND ANALYSIS

i. “Calling time on tyranny,” by Reed Brody from Human Right Watch, The
Guardian, 26 September 2007,
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/reed_brody/2007/09/calling_time_on_tyran
ny.html

“Chile's extradition of former president Alberto Fujimori back to Peru to
stand trial on allegations of death squad killings and corruption shows that
the world is becoming a smaller place for people who commit atrocities.

Until recently, if you killed one person, you went to jail, but if you
killed thousands, you got a comfortable exile with your bank account in a
foreign country. The Nuremberg trials established the legal principle that
there should be no immunity for perpetrators of the gravest outrages, no
matter who they were or where their crimes were committed. Yet until
Britain's arrest of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile in October 1998, on a
Spanish warrant, few states had the courage to put these noble principles
into practice.

The arrest of Pinochet, who died last December in Chile, inspired others to
bring their tormentors to justice, particularly in Latin America, where
victims challenged the transitional arrangements of the 1980s and 1990s that
allowed perpetrators of atrocities to go unpunished and, often, to remain in
power. Argentina's supreme court struck down immunity laws for former
officials, and dozens now face investigation and trial for crimes during the
1976-83 dictatorship. Earlier this month, a Uruguayan court approved the
trial of Juan Maria Bordaberry, the dictator of Uruguay from 1973-76, on
allegations of the murder of opposition leaders.

Pinochet's London arrest also strengthened a new international movement to
end impunity for the worst abuses. After the creation of UN tribunals for
the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the UN established the International
Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and
serious war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so.

Even in Africa, where people have long been victims of cycles of atrocity
and impunity, international justice is on the march. Senegal has now pledged
to prosecute the exiled former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, after
refusing to try him in 2001 and refusing to extradite him to Belgium in
2005. Earlier this year, a trial began for Charles Taylor of Liberia before
the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone. The ICC is now investigating
alleged crimes in Darfur, Uganda, Congo and the Central African Republic.

A number of safe havens remain for those accused of abuses. Idi Amin of
Uganda died peacefully in Saudi Arabia. (A Saudi diplomat told Human Rights
Watch that "Bedouin hospitality'' meant that once someone was welcomed as a
guest in your tent, you did not turn him out.) Mengistu Haile Mariam,
alleged to have run a "red terror" campaign in Ethiopia targeting tens of
thousands of political opponents, now enjoys the protection of President
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Indeed, for five years, Japan protected Fujimori
from extradition on the grounds that he was a Japanese dual citizen. Then
Fujimori made the mistake of traveling to Chile.

One of the safest place for those accused of war crimes to hide may now be
the United States, which steadfastly refuses to consider prosecution of
those such as Donald Rumsfeld, alleged to have approved criminal
interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, or CIA managers
for their roles in the "waterboarding" of detainees or the "rendition" of
suspects to countries where they were tortured. Just this week, Germany,
faced with the US's refusal, dropped a request to the US to extradite 13
suspected CIA agents accused of abducting a German citizen and sending him
to be tortured in a secret jail in Afghanistan. Washington has also refused
to cooperate with Italian investigators who want to question 26 CIA agents
in connection with the Milan kidnapping of a Muslim cleric who was allegedly
sent to Egypt and tortured.

The new rule may be that if you are accused of human rights crimes, you can
hide but you can't run.

ii. Letter to the Editor by Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (The New York Times), 28 September 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/opinion/lweb28darfur.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
&oref=slogin

“Mocking the Powerless and the Powerful” (editorial, Sept. 21) correctly
calls on the Security Council to demand that Sudan arrest former Interior
Minister Ahmad Harun and turn him over to the International Criminal Court
in The Hague. Mr. Harun is charged with financing and arming janjaweed
militias responsible for the deaths of 200,000 people in Darfur and driving
2.5 million more from their homes.

The Harun case raises a larger question: Who is responsible for enforcing
the I.C.C.’s arrest warrants, not just in Sudan, but in Uganda and the
Democratic Republic of Congo as well?

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, remains holed
up in Congo with his troops, drawing out a peace process that began more
than a year ago. Mr. Kony and his generals have abducted more than 24,000
children and conducted a campaign of mutilation and terror in northern
Uganda that displaced two million people.

The court’s first indictments in October 2006 were for Mr. Kony and three of
the L.R.A. leaders. All are still at large.

The International Criminal Court is the lynchpin of an emerging
international system of justice that should make it clear to those who would
commit genocide and other crimes against humanity that the age of impunity
is drawing to a close. But to fulfill that promise and deter future
evildoers, the court’s warrants must be enforced.

The Security Council and particularly France and Britain, which are members
of the court, should take the lead. Unless the arrest warrants are enforced,
the court will not succeed, and a moment in history to create a more just
world will be lost.”

iii. “How to save Darfur,” by Canadian Member of Parliament Irwin Cotler
(Ottawa Citizen), 27 September 2007,
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=f28de4c4-f329
-4924-8737-fbbc22d8b07d

“…All of Sudan is at the risk of unravelling. This would not only engulf
Sudan in a national civil war, but would have a devastating impact on all
nine of its neighbouring countries.
Accordingly, it is our responsibility -- as I said more than three years ago
as Canada's minister of justice at the Stockholm Conference on the
Prevention of Genocide -- to shatter the silence, to break down the walls of
indifference, to sound the alarm, to stand with the people of Darfur and
Sudan.
Fortunately, as a result of the recent worldwide rallies for Darfur, it is
no longer public silence or indifference that is the problem. It is
governmental inaction. While the world dithers, Darfurians continue to die.
Africa is to be the subject of a special meeting of the UN Security Council
today. What is desperately needed is for this to become a Darfur Summit that
will be convened for the express purpose of putting a Save Darfur action
plan into effect -- and not to adjourn until such an action plan is adopted.
What follows is a refined and updated 12-point action plan that I have
recommended before, whereby the international community, including Canada,
can exercise the necessary moral, political, diplomatic, and economic
leadership to save Darfur:
… 3. The culture of impunity must end. The 2005 UN Security Council
resolutions must now be enforced with the immediate establishment of a
"no-fly" zone, the enforcement of the UN arms embargo, the UN-ordered
disarmament of the murderous Janjaweed militia, and the bringing to justice
of the Sudanese officials responsible for international crimes -- now
shielded by the Sudanese government -- before the International Criminal
Court….”

**************
CICC's policy on the referral and prosecution of situations before the ICC:
The Coalition for the ICC is not an organ of the Court. The CICC is an
independent NGO movement dedicated to the establishment of the International
Criminal Court as a fair, effective, and independent international
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or
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(potential and current), or situations under analysis before the ICC.
However,
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