Go On! "Child soldiers" @ NYC Bar

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

The New York City Bar Association's Committee on African Affairs will sponsor a panel on an issue much in the news these days, given the verdicts in Lubanga and Taylor, not to mention the "Kony 2012" video.
Title for the panel, which will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 24, at the House of the Association, 42 West 44th Street, New York, is "The Child Soldier Crisis:Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation." (IntLawGrrls posts on child soldiers available here.)
Organizers write:

'Today approximately 300,000 children are serving as soldiers in more than 30 conflicts worldwide in clear violation of international law. Many have been abducted or recruited by force and others join armed groups out of desperation and impoverished circumstances. This panel of noted experts will explore the use of child soldiers as a violation of international law and will also propose strategies for prevention and rehabilitation.'

Scheduled to speak are: Grace Akallo (left), former child soldier and founder and Executive Director of United Africans for Women and Children Rights (photo credit); Jo Becker, Advocacy Director, Children's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch; Radhika Coomaraswamy (below right), Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (photo credit); and Penille Ironside, Senior Advisor, Child Protection in Emergencies, UNICEF.
Moderating will be Elizabeth Barad, an international law and gender consultant and member of the Association committee that's sponsoring the event.  Cosponsoring are 2 other Association committees, on International Human Rights and on Children and Law, as well as the Association's Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.
The event is free, but attendees are asked to RSVP to Elizabeth at elizabethbarad@gmail.com.

2011 ICC Gender Report Card

(Delighted to welcome back alumnae Brigid Inder and Kate Orlovsky, who contribute this guest post)

On 13 December 2011, the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice launched the Gender Report Card on the International Criminal Court 2011. The launch took place during the tenth session of the International Criminal Court Assembly of States Parties in New York, which IntLawGrrls covered in posts available here.
The Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, for which we work, is an international women's human rights organisation that advocates for gender justice through the ICC and through domestic mechanisms; for example, through peace negotiations and justice processes, and through working with women most affected by the conflict situations under investigation by the ICC.
We have programmes in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya and Kyrgyzstan. With offices in Cairo, Egypt, in Kampala and Kitgum, Uganda, and in The Hague, Netherlands, the Women’s Initiatives is leveraging progress at the international level to advance domestic accountability for gender-based crimes.
The Gender Report launch was attended by representatives of ICC states parties, by officials of the ICC and the United Nations, and by academics, the media, and other members of civil society. Speakers during the event included: ICC Prosecutor-Elect Fatou Bensouda, U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy and one of us, the Women’s Initiatives’ Executive Director, Brigid Inder.
Here are some highlights (also see here):
► Bensouda's gave first public address since her 12 December election as next Chief Prosecutor of the ICC ( she published the statement she made on her election day as an IntLawGrrls guest post). In her launch address, which earned notice by the Washington Post, Bensouda pledged to prosecute sexual and gender crimes, saying:

'This office, under my tenure, will continue and will make sure that these crimes that they have suffered will be punished — their perpetrators being arrested and prevented from committing additional crimes … This is a commitment that I make to all of you today.'

Bensouda also stated that in the past the Office of the Prosecutor had not done as well as it could have in working with women’s organisations, and that as Prosecutor she will ensure that her office works more closely with these groups, including local women’s rights organisations in conflict countries, which are often the only ones assisting women victims.
► Coomaraswamy spoke from her experience both as the former Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and as the current U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. (See posts on our Twitter feed here.) She recalled:

'What frustrated most of us in the 1990s is that the international legal framework had nothing to say about sexual and gender-based crimes. When we think of the ICC, we think of the broad definition of sexual violence, which was unthinkable before the Rome Statute. But, let’s not forget the struggle that went into creating this framework.'

► In her speech, Brigid spoke to the purpose of the Gender Report Card 2011, or GRC, available in pdf here. Brigid stressed:

'Monitoring and critiquing the ICC and production of the GRC is one of our strategies to advocate for gender-inclusive justice and to promote the capacity of the court to address gender issues within the global legal system. It is also one of our strategies for the inclusion and participation of women in shaping international criminal law as law-makers, practitioners, decision-makers, participants and beneficiaries of the justice process.'

This is the seventh annual report card produced by the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. (Previous post; prior editions available here.) This Gender Report Card 2011, which soon will be available at our website, analyses the institutional developments of the ICC throughout 2011, as well the Court’s substantive work and jurisprudence. It also examines the Court’s internal policies, its recruitment and personnel statistics, its institutional development, and the work of its independent bodies, such as the Trust Fund for Victims and the Office of the Public Counsel for Victims. The Gender Report Card 2011 contains detailed recommendations both to the Court and to the ICC Assembly of States Parties. In short, it provides the most comprehensive gender analysis of the ICC currently available.

The Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women: National Advocacy Strategies

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

Despite a historic blizzard that shut down the mid-Atlantic region in February 2010, an intimate meeting of gender and human rights advocates from all over the country took place in Charlottesville, Virginia with the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo. Fortunately, Rashida was in town already for a three week residency at the University of Virginia School of Law. Participants (pictured below right) included: IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Prof. Carrie Bettinger-López, Director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law; Anu Bhagwati, Service Women's Action Network (SWAN); Prof. Karen Czapanskiy, University of Maryland Law School; Jan Erickson, NOW Foundation; Attorney Deborah LaBelle; Rachel Natelson, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; Maya Raghu, Legal Momentum; IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Cindy Soohoo, Center for Reproductive Rights; Cheryl Thomas, The Advocates for Human Rights; Heidi Williamson, SisterSong; and yours truly, host and organizer of the event.
Rashida had already submitted a formal request to the United States government for an official mission under her mandate. Her interest in focusing on the United States, she explained, was triggered by the UN Human Rights Council's (and the UN in general's) shift to a more even-handed approach, which aims to ensure that scrutiny extends beyond the global South. Rashida said that she always hears statements about violence against women (VAW) being a serious problem in Asia or in Africa. “We must look at VAW through a global, universal lens, with some specificities, of course,” she noted.
In 1998, the first U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy undertook an official United States mission in which she focused particularly on women in custodial settings. Rashida wanted to include some follow-up to Radhika’s 1999 prison report.
The roundtable aimed to identify the critical issues that U.S. advocates believed should be the focus of such a mission now. We concluded that the Special Rapporteur (SRVAW) would benefit most from being briefed by domestic advocates with respect to gaps and contradictions within national law and policy. Rashida explained that reports from interest groups and on particular facilities or statistical trends generally help shape her reports. In particular, the group acknowledged the importance of intersectionality (pp. 6-21), and the due diligence standard with respect to violence against women (and which are the focus of the Special Rapporteur’s second and third thematic reports this year and in 2012, respectively).
Over the course of the subsequent ten months, a large advocacy network around the country held phone conferences and five teams drafted comprehensive briefing papers for the Special Rapporteur. The papers, authored by a broad range of academics and women's rights advocates and lawyers, focused on:

1. Domestic Violence;
   
2. Violence Against Women in Detention;
3. Violence Against Women in the U.S. Military
4. The Role of Guns in Perpetrating Violence Against Women; and
   
5. Due Diligence Obligations of the United States in the Case of Violence Against Women.

(The briefing papers, which were coordinated and edited by the University of Virginia International Human Rights Clinic, are currently being edited for publication as a resource volume which will be available later this summer.)
The SRVAW's United States mission took place from January 24 to February 7, 2011, with meetings in Washington D.C., North Carolina, Florida, California, Minnesota and New York. At the local level, Rashida met with tribal authorities in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, North Carolina; and with state and county authorities in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. She visited three prisons and detention facilities managed by federal and state authorities, including the Glades County Detention Center in Florida; and two of the facilities visited by Radhika Coomaraswamy in 1998: the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California and the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. Rashida cancelled a planned visit the Monmouth County Correctional Institution in New Jersey because she was not granted full access to speak with inmates. She also asked the U.S. government to visit a military base two weeks before the mission started, and reiterated the request upon commencement of the mission. She was informed that Department of Defense protocol was unable to accommodate the request on such short notice.
The Special Rapporteur's report on the mission to the United States was delivered June 3, 2011 at the Human Rights Council session in Geneva. It

broadly examines the situation of violence against women in the country, including such issues as violence in custodial settings, domestic violence, violence against women in the military, and violence against women who face multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination, particularly Native-American, immigrant, and African-American women.

Rashida’s focus on the combined issues of race and class is critical to addressing the structural nature of the problem of violence against women. For example, she highlights the increasing number of immigrant and African American women in prisons and detention facilities, and calls upon the government to address the root causes of this trend, paying attention to the intersectional challenges.
She acknowledges the positive legislative and policy initiatives the U.S. government has taken to reduce the occurrence of violence against women. Nevertheless, Rashida concludes that

the lack of substantive protective legislation at federal and state levels, and the inadequate implementation of current laws, policies and programs, has resulted in the continued prevalence of violence against women and the discriminatory treatment of victims, with particularly detrimental effects on poor, minority and immigrant women. [The report notes that] implementation of current policy and programmatic initiatives must address the persistent structural challenges which are often both the causes and consequences of violence against women.

This thoughtful and comprehensive report on the causes and consequences of violence against women in the United States is a call to all of us to redouble our efforts in supporting and pressing the government to act consistently and with due diligence in its policies and resources to eradicate the problems at all levels. The advocacy network is planning a series of events in conjunction with Rashida’s report to the UN General Assembly in New York in October. For more information and to get involved, contact me.

Madame la Secrétaire générale?

The problem is not a lack of capable women. The problem is a lack of determination, political will and vision.

So concludes a San Francisco Chronicle commentary urging that a woman be appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations at the end of Ban Ki-moon's 1st term in January 2012. (credit for (c) Francesco Federico photo of U.N. plaza)
Only 3 words are devoted to the possibility that Ban, formerly a diplomat in South Korea, might be reappointed. The rest of the full-page essay sets out reasons why "It's time for a Madame Secretary," to quote the title as it appeared in the print edition. (As Stephanie's post above explains, the issue's arisen before.)
The authors -- Dr. Michael E. Brown, Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and Dr. Chantal de Jonge Oudrant, Associate Vice Presidentof the Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program, U.S. Institute of Peace -- then suggest several "brilliant female leaders" whom they deem to possess the requisite "policy expertise, political experience and gravitas."
And their nominees are:
► U.N. Under-Secretary Michelle Bachelet (prior posts), who now serves as the 1st head of UN Women, having completed service as President of Chile, the 1st woman so to lead her country. (More UN Women news in the post below.)
► Helen Clark (prior posts), Administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (1st woman to lead that agency) and former Prime Minister of New Zealand (1st woman to win that office following an election).
► Radhika Coomaraswamy (prior posts), U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and former chair of the Sri Lanka Human rights Commission.
► Graça Machel (prior posts), who has served as a U.N. expert on child soldiers, is a women's and children's rights advocate, and who was Minister of Education and Culture in Mozambique.
► Margot Wallström (prior posts), U.N. Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict and formerly holder of ministerial posts both in her native Sweden and in European institutions.
An impressive list.
Glaring omission: absence of any mention of the 3 women who've served as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Other nominations welcome.

Gender Report Card on the ICC

(Delighted to welcome back alumnae Brigid Inder and Kate Orlovsky, who contribute this guest post)

During the 9th Session of the International Criminal Court Assembly of States Parties, held earlier this month in New York, Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice, the Hague-based nongovernmental organization at which we work, launched its Gender Report Card on the International Criminal Court, 2010.
The launch was one of the first events to be co-hosted by UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, as part of UN Women, the new agency for women headed by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet (prior IntLawGrrls posts). Attending were representative of the ICC and its states parties, the United Nations, and various NGOs. Speakers included Margot Wallström (middle right), formerly a public official in Sweden and Europe, who was appointed the U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict earlier this year; Joanne Sandler, Deputy Executive Director of UNIFEM; and one of us, Brigid Inder, Executive Director of the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice.
In her speech, Brigid called attention to 2010 as a year of '"firsts":
►For the first time charges of genocide were included in an arrest warrant -- and these included acts of rape and sexual violence.
►The ICC began its first trial, in Prosecutor v. Bemba, in relation to crimes committed in the Central African Republic.
►The Court heard its first witness to provide testimony in relation to charges of sexual violence.
►The first expert witness to address gender-based crimes appeared before the ICC. This expert was Radhika Coomaraswamy (right), the Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. (photo credit) In the trial of Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (prior posts), Coomaraswamy provided insight into the gender dimensions of the enlistment and conscription of child soldiers.
►For the first time three participating victims were also enabled to testify.
►An all-women bench is presiding a trial at the ICC. This is a first in any of the international tribunals.
►For the first time, as described in IntLawGrrls posts available here, the Prosecutor exercised proprio motu powers by issuing summonses in relation to the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya.
For states parties it was also a year of firsts:
► At this summer's Review Conference in Kampala, the Assembly of States Parties adopted proposed amendments on the crime of aggression that clearly define the crime -- a crime that, in time, individuals will be held accountable by the ICC.
►Four more states became states parties, bringing the total number of members to 114.
There were some unexpected developments during 2010, such as the second stay of proceedings in the Lubanga case.
Nevertheless, women around the world are supporting and urging the ICC to prosecute gender-based crimes with vision and direction, with determination and purpose, and with clarity about the ICC's intention to contribute to justice for women.
The Women's Initiatives' Gender Report Card analyses the institutional developments of the ICC throughout 2010, as well the ICC's substantive work and jurisprudence. The review of the ICC's substantive progress includes:
► An examination of the investigation and prosecution strategy of the Office of the Prosecutor; and
► An overview of trial proceedings and analysis of key judicial decisions. The focus is on cases where gender-based crimes have been charged or where these issues have arisen during the legal proceedings, as well as on those decisions affecting victims and witnesses appearing before the Court.
In short, the Gender Report Card provides the most comprehensive gender analysis of the ICC currently available.

Intersectionality and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo, will present a thematic report to the Human Rights Council in June 2011. Manjoo’s report will focus on intersectional forms of discrimination in the context of violence against women. Manjoo, who has held the appointment of Special Rapporteur since 2009, comes to the office with impressive credentials from her years as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, as the former South African Parliamentary Commissioner of the Commission on Gender Equality, and as an accomplished activist focusing on violence against women within South Africa.
The Special Rapporteur should be applauded for undertaking the research to produce a report on intersectionality and violence and to bring it to the attention of the Human Rights Council. Not since the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, has the Special Rapporteur’s office engaged with issues of intersectionality in such a meaningful way. In 2001, the then-Special Rapporteur, Radhika Coomaraswamy, issued a report in preparation for the World Conference that was important in challenging the U.N.’s historical tendency to compartmentalize human rights abuses as either the result of gender discrimination or racial discrimination -- but not both. In the past, I have critiqued the U.N. human rights treaty bodies’ tendency to neatly compartmentalize forms of discrimination rather than explore their intersections. I am encouraged to see the Special Rapporteur’s office undertake to study the myriad ways in which women are targeted for violence based not only on gender but also on their membership in ethnic, religious, sexual, and other minority communities.

Days Two and Three in Kampala

(Another in IntLawGrrls' series of Kampala Conference posts)

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Days Two and Three at the ICC Review Conference have been very interesting. On Tuesday, June 1, the official program included statements by countries, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). One statement that was listened to quite closely that of Ambassador Stephen Rapp for the United States, in which he raised several questions of concern about the ongoing discussions on the crime of aggression. The Netherlands announced that it had collected 112 pledges from 37 states to provide the ICC with financial and other assistance. For example, Australia pledged to provide 100,000 Euros to the ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims.
I also attended the final portion of the full-day Women’s Court, organized by the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice and held in the People’s Space tent. This portion focused on testimonies from individuals from Sudan and was chaired by Elisabeth Rehn, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims (pictured left). I had read Halima Bashir’s book, Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur, on the flight to Kampala. In her book, Dr. Bashir describes how she – as a young Zaghawa medical doctor – treated victims of the Janjaweed militia, including schoolgirls who had been repeatedly and brutally raped. She, in turn for providing medical care for her own people, was beaten, tortured and raped by the Sudanese security forces. The three individuals speaking at the Women’s Court event described similar stories of rape, torture, killing, displacement, economic deprivation and desperate survival in Darfur. They also described how the laws in Sudan make it very difficult for rape survivors to seek justice, and how individuals suspected of supporting the ICC and other human rights defenders are targeted for detention and mistreatment in Sudan.
June 2 began with the first stocktaking exercise, on the impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, gave the keynote address (pictured left). Her speech was followed by a panel discussion involving Justine Masika Bihamba of Synergie des femmes pour les victimes des violences sexuelles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (pictured right), Elisabeth Rehn, Carla Ferstman of REDRESS, David Tolbert of the International Center for Transitional Justice, Binta Mansaray of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Silvana Arbia of the ICC. Ms. Arbia, the ICC’s Registrar, noted that the ICC has received 2600 applications from individuals to be admitted as victim participants in the ICC process. Of these, more than 800 have been accepted by the Court. Several themes emerged from the stocktaking exercise, including:

• the importance of protecting intermediaries, who are crucial in helping the ICC gain access to victims,
• the challenges facing the ICC in getting sufficient information to women, who may not, for example, have access to the family radio – an important source of information about the ICC,
• the need for the ICC to effectively manage victims’ expectations of what the Court can do for them;
• the need for the ICC to improve its two-way dialogue with victims, and
• the need for States Parties to cooperate with the Court so as to better protect victims.

In the afternoon, the stocktaking exercise on peace and justice took place. After hearing from panelists David Tolbert, peace mediator James LeMoyne, Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia and Barney Afako of the Juba peace process, states, IGOs and NGOs made statements and asked questions. Again, several interlinked themes emerged:

• there is a positive relationship between peace and justice, but also a tension.
• in some sense, the existence of the ICC and other international criminal justice mechanisms can strengthen a mediator’s hand because they clearly remove amnesty as a bargaining chip. However, this can also make a mediator’s job harder: how to get individuals and groups to agree to peace? Mediators need to be creative.
• the ICC holds the potential to deter serious international crimes, but we need to make justice – both international and domestic - more normal to make deterrence more real.
• the views of victims on whether they wish to prioritize peace or justice, or both, may shift over time.
• It is important for all of us to stand up to those who are defiant of the ICC. Justice will always have enemies.

At the end of the day, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched its newest publication: The Domestic Implementation of International Humanitarian Law. For those interested in IHL, I urge you to check out this wonderful resource once it is posted on the ICRC website.
June 3 marks the second day of the stocktaking exercise, with a focus on complementarity and cooperation.

Gender-based violence: Special rapporteur appointed

The United Nations Human Rights Council (photo below) approved Rashida Manjoo’s appointment as the new UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women its Causes and Consequences on 18 June 2009, according to a UN press release. Manjoo (above, photo credit) is a leading gender rights, anti-apartheid, and social justice advocate. The Special Rapporteur’s mandate, established in 1994, and extended in 2003, is to investigate, and to make recommendations at international, regional, and national levels on ending, gender-based violence (GBV).
Often treated as a marginal issue by governments, GBV is a global phenomenon and impacts people at all levels of society. It occurs in every country and culture and takes a range of forms, including the following:
►Family Violence: domestic violence/honor killings, female genital cutting, violently enforced appearance regulation, female infanticide, and abuses against girls, elders, and women with disabilities;
►Violence in the Community: rape, trafficking in women and girls, lack of access to reproductive health care, forced sterilization, the misuse of medical techniques to “control” women, and violence aimed at preventing the education of girls;
►State Violence and State-condoned Violence: GBV against women in detention, the use of rape, forced pregnancy, and other forms of sexual violence as weapons of war or armed conflict.
Groundbreaking international human rights instruments such as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and General Recommendation No. 19 (issued by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) elaborate on the significant roles states and private actors must play in ending GBV.
Manjoo, an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa, served on that country’s constitutionally-prescribed Commission on Gender Equality from 2001 to 2006. She held research and teaching positions in international human rights law and advocacy and family law as a Clinical Instructor and Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and as the E. Desmond Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University. Manjoo writes and speaks extensively on women’s rights and other social justice issues.
A member of the international board of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, she is an internationally-recognized expert on the implications of cultural and religious context for gender rights and the socio-economic status of women and girls.
Rashida Manjoo is the third Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, following the appointments of Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy (Sri Lanka) in 1994, and Dr. Yakin Ertürk (Turkey) in 2003.
IntLawGrrls look forward to a continued international spotlight on GBV and to the realization of a safer and more peaceful world for all.