"International Law & Africa" online course

The headline on the Google list – "6: International Criminal Justice and Africa" – intrigued.
What was that "6" about?
One click revealed an exposition, on the International Criminal Court and related issues, that's well-written, well-reasoned, informative  – and timely, given the address on Libya that ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda delivered to the U.N. Security Council yesterday. (Video of Bensouda's report and member state comments here; screengrab at right courtesy of UN webcast; IntLawGrrls' prior posts on the Situation in Libya here.)
The author of the No. 6 essay is Dr. Chacha Bhoke Murungu, a researcher at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, South Africa and author of Prosecuting International Crimes in Africa.
Given the specific focus indicated in his title, his essay included a section sub-headed with an oft-asked question:

'Are the ICC and the Security Council biased against Africa?'

Then followed a careful discussion of jurisdiction and other factors – in Bhoke's words, "the outwardly neutral field of law and the political decisions" at play.
The essay concluded with a fact sheet and further questions to consider.
Turns out this item, posted Tuesday, was No. 6 in a "Free Online Course: International Law and Africa," offered at a year-old, London-based webzine called Think Africa Press.
Authoring these online course sessions are inter alia Maryland Law Professor Maxwell Chibundu and Utah Law Professor Antony Anghie.
Other topics covered so far in the course, which began last Friday (links available here):

(course logo; credit Think Africa Press)

1: An Introduction to TAP's New Course, "International Law and Africa"
2: Sources of International Law
3: Africa, Sovereignty and International Law
4: Africa's Application of UN Human Rights Enforcement Systems
5: Understanding The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights
7: Responsibility to Protect
Kudos to the course editors, Rom Bhandari and James Wan, for putting this together.  Readers, check it out.

A difference a decade makes

Back in 1998, the political branches of the U.S. government seemed at one in fearing the power of an independent prosecutor for the International Criminal Court.
Then Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the administration of President Bill Clinton, David J. Scheffer, cautioned against permitting international prosecutors to act proprio motu -- on their own motion, as national prosecutors do -- for fear that it would

'encourage overwhelming the Court with complaints and risk diversion of its resources, as well as embroil the Court in controversy, political decision-making, and confusion.'

Meanwhile, Senator Jesse Helms (R-S.C.), Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, complained that the proprio motu prosecutor would be

'accountable to no state or institution for his actions.'

Quite different tunes are to be heard from official Washington today, little more than a decade later. As the Office of the Prosecutor goes forward with its proprio motu investigation of post-election violence in Kenya, it can expect continued support from the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made U.S. concerns about Kenya clear during a visit the country last August, when she

said that if the Kenyan government refused to set up a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of last year’s election-driven bloodshed, the International Criminal Court at The Hague would get involved.

It's no accident that those comments occurred in Kenya, birthplace of the father of President of the United States. Barack Obama made clear his concern about problems in Kenya in his 1st book, Dreams from My Father (1995), which our colleague Antony Anghie aptly dubbed "a story of the failure of the postcolonial state" in a keynote speech to the American Society of International Law keynote last week. Obama reiterated concern on the campaign trail. Giving voice to the Obama Administration's position, Clinton said in August:

'I have urged that the Kenyan government find the way forward themselves. But if not, then the names turned over to the I.C.C. will be opened, and an investigation will begin.'

And it has.

As IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack detailed, yesterday the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber gave the Office of the Prosecutor the go-ahead to investigate.

During her recent visit to the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, ICC Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda praised the United States for its assistance in the Kenya and other matters. Just last week, in the ASIL keynote about which we've already posted, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser to the State Department, spoke with evident pride of the United States' re-engagement with the ICC by observer-status attendance at meetings of the Assembly of States Parties (including the forthcoming Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda). Koh said:

'The United States believes it can be valuable partner and ally,'

and he promised further U.S. support to the ICC.

All this is not to say that the position of the United States raises no eyebrows.

During Secretary of State Clinton's Nairobi visit last August, a university student asked "how the United States could support having the court intervene in Kenya's problems when the U.S. government has not subjected itself to its procedures." By way of reply Clinton expressed "'great regret'" about U.S. nonparty status, adding:

'But we have supported the court and continue to do so.'

A decade of difference, indeed.

Can Free Trade End War?

(Part 2 of a 3-part series)

Probably since the first cavemen crawled out of their burrows to exchange firewood for leopard skins, trading relationships have led to strife and war (credit). Prof. Antony Anghie’s work traces the birth of international law—at least in part—to the need to regulate these relationships. And my own recent scholarship focuses on the Berlin Conference of 1884, an attempt by European powers to avert a trade-related war by “peaceably” carving up the African continent into trade zones. Thus, war and trade have always been linked, but the civilizing influence of time was said to have moved us away from the raw grab for power and riches so prevalent in earlier centuries. Trade would now be a source of peace rather than strife (so claims Thomas Friedman in his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention— “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other”). In my last post, I asked whether that was possible: Can free trade end war? Prof. Colin Picker’s article, Trade and Security: Empiricism, Change, Emotion & Relevancy suggests not. Picker maintains the “new flavors” of armed conflict are such that trade policy will have little influence on them. In post-Cold War conflicts, he argues, economic factors are not the source of the conflict so much as ethnic or religious tensions. Given that reality, trade policy is a poor substitute for a more robust peace policy, and trade officials are poorly equipped to handle the problem in any case.
While I would agree that in many (if not most) conflicts, trade policy standing alone is not enough to achieve a lasting peace, I also suggest that it is often the first step. Whether internally or externally generated, war is a failure of diplomacy that necessarily leads to a breakdown in linkages between the warring parties. Trade is a way of re-establishing some ties, which hopefully prove too lucrative to dissolve permanently. Friedman claims, for example, that while the war in Kosovo was a refutation of his Golden Arches theory, it was the exception that proved the rule:

Belgrade is a modern city integrated with Western Europe, with a population that wants to be part of today's main global trends . . . Once NATO turned out the lights in Belgrade, and shut down the power grids and the economy, Belgrade's citizens demanded an end to the war. It's that simple. Not only did NATO soldiers not want to die for Kosovo -- neither did the Serbs of Belgrade.
They wanted to be part of the world, more than they wanted Kosovo to be part of them. They wanted McDonald's re-opened, much more than they wanted Kosovo re-occupied.

A few years ago, I read Thomas Barnett’s, The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century and was struck by his charge that modern instabilities in the world order stem almost exclusively from those countries left out of the “functioning core” of globalization. Rather than de-linking trade policy from modern wars, trade policy should be more conscious of the nexus between trade and peace. If we fail to bring the prosperity trade engenders to every corner of the globe, then we risk having those neglected and long-forgotten castaways visit us in our own backyards. In my next post, I want to explore the question of how might we organize trade policy to address some modern conflicts.