Humanitarian Law in Action within Africa

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this introductory post)

I’m happy to share news of my book Humanitarian Law in Action within Africa, soon to be released by Oxford University Press.
The book is the culmination of a four-year project that started with a panel presentation on the relationship between criminal justice and restorative justice in countries coming out of armed conflict. Slowly a book evolved. It explores the interrelationships between humanitarian law, human rights, international criminal law, and refugee law, as rules and tools for conflict resolution and social reconstruction.
The book compares the experiences of people in Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Burundi in the ongoing work of transitional justice in each of their countries.
My book has two parts:
► Part 1 is more “legal” – with individual chapters devoted to international law, and its four sister sub-fields. This part is designed to be a bit of a primer for academics who might specialize in one but not all of the various disciplines, and for practitioners who know the law in application but might want more of a conceptual framework.
Part I is global in scope and afro-centric in emphasis, with lots of examples from the region, and comparisons to other regions.
► Part II is focused on implementation, and explores five realms in which international law is tested on the ground – by courts, (peacekeeping) troops, the media, development efforts, and communities – all within countries emerging from civil war.
This section starts with a chapter that looks at each mechanism. Included are criminal trials, human rights education programs, efforts to empower women and engage youth through social programs and law reform, and grassroots dispute resolution traditions, and their incorporation into national truth commissions. Examples from each country help illustrate how these different mechanisms work – in collaboration, or at cross-purposes, or both.
Part II also has three country chapters, one each devoted to Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Burundi.
I went to each country in 2010 on short, intensive field visits, interviewing folks from academia, from non-profits, and from government. Only in Sierra Leone did I spend time in the provinces –otherwise I was in Kampala, Bujumbura, and Freetown.
My short trips to the three countries built on prior experience in Africa, including two years in the early 1990s when I worked with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Conakry, Guinea. There I worked with Sierra Leonean refugees. In addition, I spent six months in 2002-03 teaching international law at the University of Dar es Salaam, and did peace education work with Burundian refugees in western Tanzania. The trips I took in 2010 were vital – for the human connection and the chance to test ideas and listen to stories.
In a future blog post, I plan to share more coherent thoughts on the subject of women in war and peace and women’s role in transformative justice. Women’s suffering, perseverance, and agency, realized and unrealized, are themes that run through the book. At the same time, these are themes that need much more exploration, by all of us.
I close today’s post by thanking these women, of Ugandan, Sierra Leonean, Burundian, French and American and nationalities: Agnes Jattu Carew-Bah, Libby Hoffman, Binta Mansaray, Kassie McIlvaine, Zahara Nampewo, Agnes Nindorera, Rachel Odoi-Musoke, Maud Roure, and Mary Turay.
Their words contributed to Humanitarian Law in Action within Africa, and their work continues.

Read On! Women leaders/West Africa

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing worth reading)

Women and Leadership in West Africa: Mothering the Nation and Humanizing the State (2011) is the intriguing title of a new book to which IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis has alerted us (thanks!).
The author is Filomina Chioma Steady (right), Professor of Africana Studies, Gender Studies, and Environmental Studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. (photo credit)
As described by one of Cheady's colleagues, Wellesley Anthropology Professor Anastasia Karakasidou:

'The West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone provide the setting of this magnificent recounting of how the postcolonial state can acquire a humanizing face through the leadership efforts of women. This book unmasks the western stereotypes of endemic violence and ethnic strife in African societies and renders them as mere gendered manifestation of political power distribution.'

Read on!

Guest Blogger: Lydia Apori Nkansah

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Lydia Apori Nkansah (right) as today's guest blogger.
As a lecturer in law at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, Lydia is scheduled to teach international criminal law in an LL.M program scheduled for early next year.
Previously, she held a lectureship at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, where she: taught public law and human rights law; facilitated courses in conflicts and conflicts resolution; trained members of the Parliaments of Ghana and Liberia on constitutionalism and legislative process; and served as an academic instructor at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College. She helped to establish a law school -- the 3d in Ghana -- at the Institute.
Lydia's experience in human rights enforcement, in both peacetime and postconflict situations, includes service as: a senior legal officer at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice of Ghana, where she adjudicated complaints of alleged human rights abuses and administrative injustices; head of the Research Unit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone and leader of evidence for the commission's hearings; and international expert advisor on a Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Bill to that country's Transitional Legislative Assembly.
She holds an LL.B and LL.M, from the Ambrose Alli (formerly Bendel State) University, as well as a Ph.D. from Walden University. Her dissertation, which may be seen presenting in this video, received the university's 2008 Harold L. Hodgkinson Award.
Lydia's research looks at transitional democracies from a legal perspective; for instance, juridical models for addressing past abuses. Her book Transitional Justice: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Postconflict Sierra Leone (2010), she examines the dynamics of concurrent use of both restorative and retributive mechanisms as a means for transitional justice in postconflict societies. In her guest post below, she outlines findings of her research on the variance between international understandings of justice and the understanding of Sierra Leoneans with respect to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Heartfelt welcome!

Rebuilding Sierra Leone

The University of South Carolina School of Law recently hosted a very interesting conference entitled “Rebuilding Sierra Leone: Changing Institutions and Culture” (logo at right). Organized by Professor Joel Samuels, this April 1 conference was one of the first interdisciplinary academic conferences in the United States to focus solely on the unique challenges of redeveloping Sierra Leone after its decade-long armed conflict in the 1990s.
The goal of the conference was to highlight salient issues that have hindered Sierra Leone’s post-war rebuilding, and to begin discussion among academics working in different disciplines on future collaborations on Sierra Leone-specific projects.
The conference was divided into four panels:
► “Sierra Leone in Context”
► “Paths to Rebuilding Sierra Leone”
► “The Special Court for Sierra Leone”
► “The Problem of Child Soldiers”
Some highlights included a talk by Professor Erika George (University of Utah) (left) that began with the observation that erosion or failure of the education system is one of the first indicators of a failing or failed state. She linked this idea to the state of education in Sierra Leone prior to and after the conflict, noting some post-conflict improvements but also some very worrying gaps that still remain.
Another thought-provoking speaker was Professor Jennifer Moore (University of New Mexico) (right), who argued that post-conflict Sierra Leone needs not only courtroom (retributive) justice, it also needs to focus on social justice (material well-being), and historical justice (addressing peace in community life. She highlighted the work of two nongovernmental organizations within Sierra Leone – the Centre for Development and Peace Education and Fambul Tok – in contributing to the two latter forms of justice.
Yours truly, Valerie Oosterveld, had the honour of presenting a paper on the jurisprudence of the Special Court for Sierra Leone with respect to gender-based crimes against humanity and war crimes. I traced positive and less-than-positive legal reasoning with respect to gender-based acts in the trial judgments in what are usually referred to as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and the Civil Defence Forces cases. I contrasted these cases with the Revolutionary United Front case, arguing that the RUF case represents a step forward in efforts to contextualize rape, sexual mutilation and other forms of sexual violence directed against women, girls, men and boys, as well as gender-based crimes such as forced marriage. My presentation represented a continuation of arguments outlined in a recently-published article - “The Gender Jurisprudence of the Special Court for Sierra Leone: Progress in the Revolutionary United Front Judgments” (2011) 44(1) Cornell International Law Journal 49-74.
The conference participants also heard interesting presentations by: Prof. Christopher DeCorse (Syracuse University), Herb Frazier (author), Kevin Lowther (author), Joseph Opala (Bunce Island Conservation Project), Ambassador June Carter Perry (former US Ambassador to Sierra Leone), Lt. Col. Mark Daubney (British Embassy), Ambassador David Scheffer (Northwestern University), James Hodes (Cochran Law Firm), Anthony Triolo (International Center for Transitional Justice), Professor Daniel Hoffman (University of Washington), Professor Mark Drumbl (Washington & Lee University) and Professor Noah Novogrodsky (University of Wyoming).
There was discussion among the conference participants about publishing an edited volume focused on possibilities and challenges facing Sierra Leone in its rebuilding efforts: I will keep IntLawGrrl readers informed about this potentially exciting development!

On July 29

On this day in ...
... 2003, the most notorious of those who led rebels during the 1990s civil war in Sierra Leone, 65-year-old Foday Sankoh, died in custody while awaiting trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone (logo at right). On March 7 of the same year, that court had issued against the Revolutionary United Front leader an indictment on 17 counts of crimes against humanity, violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. The indictment would be withdrawn on December 8, 2003.

(Prior July 29 posts are here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

We have witnessed with shame the horrible events that occurred in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia and even here in Kenya. Thousands of Africans have been killed and displaced, women raped and forced to live as sex slaves, property destroyed and communities displaced.
As a Kenyan, and as an African woman, I can affirm that whether it is here in Kenya or in Darfur, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Central African Republic or in Uganda, the need for justice is universal. The ICC is bringing us hope that we can finally see the fulfilment of the right of the victims to learn the truth, to see the perpetrators of these crimes tried, and to receive reparation. The only reason we might fear ICC is if we are guilty.

-- The 2004 Nobel Peace Prizewinner, Dr. Wangari Maathai (above left), in an op-ed, which she published yesterday in the Nairobi-based Daily Nation, reflecting on the work of the Kampala International Criminal Court Conference. (credit for photo by Martin Rowe)

ICC Review Conference Considers When International Criminal Adjudication Makes Sense

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Margaret deGuzman, who contributes this guest post to IntLawGrrls' series on the ICC Kampala Conference)

KAMPALA, Uganda – As others have noted in this series of posts, the Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court under way in Kampala has devoted two days to a “stocktaking” exercise. The idea was to review key issues in international criminal justice with a view to enhancing the work of the ICC. These portions of the Review Conference felt a lot like law school panel discussions, except that after the panelists spoke they took questions and comments from representatives of states and NGOs rather than from faculty and students.

Two of the stocktaking topics – peace/justice and complementarity – raised important issues relevant to the advisability and legitimacy of ICC prosecutions in particular situations. The peace/justice discussion considered whether it is ever appropriate for justice to be sacrificed in the name of peace (a question on which IntLawGrrl Kathleen A. Doty yesterday posted with regard to Darfur). The complementarity session, meanwhile, concerned how the task of providing justice should be allocated between international and domestic courts. This post provides some details on those discussions, as well as a few thoughts about what was left out.

Peace/justice

Setting the stage for the peace/justice session was Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth session, who questioned the common assumption that peace and justice are in conflict. As evidence of a more harmonious relationship between these goals, Roth cited the claim by Richard Goldstone, the 1st Prosecutor of the ad hoc tribunals, that the Dayton peace accord would not have been possible without the issuance of arrest warrants of Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Roth also noted that many believe the peace process was assisted both by the indictments of Charles Taylor, then President of Liberia, by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and by the ICC’s pursuit of the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. In contrast, Roth noted that amnesty agreements have often failed to secure lasting peace, citing Sierra Leone and Angola as examples.

David Tolbert, formerly Deputy Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and now head of of the International Center for Transitional Justice, opined that amnesty is now entirely off the table in conflict resolution efforts. Tolbert noted, however, that prosecutors must be sensitive to the political situation on the ground – although politics can’t impact the decision to prosecute they might affect the timing of prosecutions.

Providing a somewhat different perspective was James LeMoyne, an experienced conflict mediator. LeMoyne emphasized the importance of stopping conflict to advance human rights. He recalled the threats of commanders with whom he negotiated in El Salvador that any talk of prosecution would lead directly to more killing. LeMoyne also pointed out that many of the people with whom he negotiates have not even heard of the ICC.

Barney Afako, a Ugandan human rights lawyer, cautioned that the LRA arrest warrants may have prevented an agreement to end the war, while Cambodian activist and Khmer Rouge survivor Youk Chhang asserted that victims always want justice. State representatives also expressed conflicting views on the peace/justice debate.

While many delegates, including representatives of Congo and the European Parliament, emphasized the importance of justice for peace, China expressed the view that the two sometimes conflict and that the ICC should be more careful about exercising jurisdiction in ongoing conflicts. Iran also spoke out in favor of amnesty in some circumstances.

In sum, the discussion surfaced many of the crucial and controversial elements of the peace/justice debate. At the same time, there was little concrete discussion of the ICC’s contributions thus far to peace or justice, and even less progress in resolving how the ICC should approach the selection of situations and cases in ongoing conflicts.

Complementarity
The complementarity discussion was kicked off by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay (right) (prior posts), who raised concerns about the ICC’s policy of focusing on the most responsible perpetrators. Pillay worried that the policy may leave states with the impression that national prosecutorial obligations are also limited to high-level perpetrators. Pillay also expressed the hope that the ICC’s complementarity regime would promote respect for the ability of states to conduct trials for international crimes; in so doing, she stated that the ad hoc tribunals have not always shown such respect. She implicitly criticized decisions by which the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (of which she previously served as President, before becoming an ICC Judge and, subsequently, the High Commissioner) refused to transfer cases to the domestic courts, refusals based on the ICTR's conclusion that domestic trials would not meet international standards.

Two national court judges involved in adjudicating international crimes provided interesting perspectives from the national justice side. Justice Dan Akiiki-Kiiza of Uganda, along with a Congolese counterpart, emphasized that their national systems are cooperating with the ICC. Interestingly, however, Justice Kiiza also stated that the Ugandan system is both willing and able to try all suspected criminals – in effect, saying that Uganda doesn’t really need the ICC.

The state interventions after the panel were mostly pledges of support for the notions that states must take primary responsibility for prosecuting international crimes and reiterations of the view that it is appropriate for both the ICC and states to assist one another in developing such capacity.

Some states, including Spain and Germany, seemed concerned about the ICC’s policy of “positive complementarity,” whereby it seeks to assist states in bolstering their ability to prosecute international crimes. These states were concerned that positive complementarity implies some additional bureaucracy outside the confines of the Rome Statute. The German representative noted that complementarity is a negative concept in Article 17 of the Rome Statute, which precludes the ICC from intervening when a relevant state is doing so genuinely.

At the end of the session, however, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo (near left) addressed the issue. (photo credit) In Moreno-Ocampo's view, the statutory basis for “positive complementarity” is not Article 17, but rather Article 93(10), which authorizes the Court to provide various kinds of assistance to states. Moreno-Ocampo assured the states that no additional bureaucracy is needed for such assistance, since the ICC already possesses the relevant information and materials by virtue of its regular activities.

Finally, the ICC President, Judge Sang-Hyun Song (above, far left), said that in his view, complementarity is either a rule of customary international law or close to attaining that status.

In all, the complementarity discussion was fairly uncontroversial – certainly less so than peace/justice. Like in the earlier session, though, there were little in the way of concrete suggestions concerning the appropriate relationship between the ICC and national courts. A number of difficult issues remained just under the surface of the conversation – including whether it is appropriate for the ICC to prosecute “self-referred” cases if the referring government is perfectly capable of doing the job itself.

Conclusion
In all, the Review Conference’s stocktaking on peace/justice and complementarity was more interesting for its tone than its content. Unlike at the 1998 Rome Conference, where many states expressed skepticism or even outright hostility toward the notion of international criminal justice, those that spoke in Kampala were overwhelmingly supportive of the enterprise. Even non-party states that have traditionally portrayed the ICC as an improper assault on sovereignty were careful to couch their comments as broadly supportive of international justice efforts.

Anyone who was hoping for a more substantive and introspective discussion of the legitimacy of ICC action was, however, disappointed.

On March 7

On this day in ...
... 2001, the U.N. Security Council, acting pursuant to Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, adopted Resolution 1343, in which it demanded that Liberia stop supporting rebels fighting the government in Sierra Leone, and imposed numerous sanctions aimed at limiting Liberia's trade in contraband; in particular, arms and diamonds.

(Prior March 7 posts are here, here, and here)

Transitions not made in Sierra Leone

Those of us who teach in the areas of international criminal law or transitional justice know well the literature that holds Sierra Leone out as something of a success story. (map credit)
Commentators point to the Special Court, established to prosecute a handful of high-level defendants, and to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that in 2004 both published a 5,000-page record of the 1990s civil war and recommended changes. Articles often make laudatory, albeit vague, references to post-conflict rehabilitation programs. Few, however, mention the record of non-implementation of truth commission recommendations, nor the fact that the country remains destitute.
A series running in the Los Angeles Times is correcting the latter omission. Today's "Forgotten Countries" installment discusses problems in sectors as varied and health care, employment, and politics. Here's an excerpt:

Sierra Leone is one of those nations where decades of foreign aid have failed to appreciably lift the fortunes of the people. The country is a charity case: 60% of its public spending comes from foreign governments and nonprofit organizations. Since 2002, it has received more than $1 billion in aid.
Yet it has the second-highest rate of infant mortality in the world, behind Angola; even Afghanistan ranks lower. The United Nations says 1 in 8 women die giving birth in Sierra Leone; the rate in the United States is 1 in 4,800. Life expectancy in Sierra Leone is 41 years; in Bangladesh it's 60.

Keep an eye out for the series' 2d installment (here, on drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau).

Guest Blogger: Myriam Denov

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome as a guest blogger Dr. Myriam Denov (right).

An Associate Professor of Social Work at McGill University in Montreal, she received her doctorate in Criminology from the University of Cambridge.

At McGill Myriam researches and teaches on children and youth at risk, with an emphasis on war and political violence, children and armed conflict, and gender-based violence. She has worked with vulnerable populations internationally including former child soldiers, victims of sexual violence, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Her current research explores the militarization and reintegration experiences of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. Myriam has presented expert evidence on child soldiers and has served as an advisor to government and NGOs on children and armed conflict, and on girls in fighting forces. She is currently writing a book on child soldiers that will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Myriam's guest post below, which draws from her experience in Sierra Leone to focus on girl soldiers, an issue on which another IntLawGrrls guest, Dr. Noëlle Quénivet, also has posted.

Myriam's transnational foremother was herself a girl soldier:

I would like to dedicate this guest post to Mamusu, who I was privileged to meet during my time in Sierra Leone. Mamusu was a former girl soldier who was abducted at the age of 9 by the rebel Revolutionary UnitedFront, forced to fight in battle, and to become the “wife” of a rebel commander. She remained with the rebel group for more than five years and bore two children, as a result of sexual violence. In the aftermath of the war, impoverished and with few systems of support, Mamusu courageously and inspirationally attempted to carve out a life and livelihood for her and her two young children. Mamusu died at the age of 17.

Mamusu joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in the list below the "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Girl Soldiers in Sierra Leone

(Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to contribute this guest post on the issue of girl soldiers, on which another guest also has posted.)

The issue of child soldiers has become an issue of global concern and has moved to the forefront of political, humanitarian and academic agendas. An estimated 250,000 soldiers under the age of 18 are fighting in conflicts in over 40 countries around the world. While there is ample descriptive evidence of the conditions and factors underlying the rise of child soldiery in the developing world, most of the literature has portrayed this as a uniquely male phenomenon, ultimately neglecting the experiences and perspectives of girls within fighting forces.

In this posting, I’d like to highlight a few of the findings from my work on girl soldiers in Sierra Leone. My work has aimed to trace girls’ perspectives and the experiences of girls as victims, participants, and resisters of violence and armed conflict. These findings have been published (many with my colleague and co-author, Dr. Richard Maclure) in several journals, including International Journal of Human Rights, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Journal of Youth Studies, Anthropologica, and Security Dialogue.

Findings:

► First, whether in the heat of conflict or within postwar programming, girls are, for the most part, rendered invisible and marginalized. During conflict, the roles that they play are frequently deemed peripheral and insignificant by governments, national and international NGOs, policy-makers, and program developers. In the aftermath of war, girls continue to be marginalized within the realms of education, economics, and are frequently discriminated against within formal disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes, as well as within the context of their families and communities.

► Second, in spite of this profound invisibility and marginalization, girls are fundamental to the war machine – their operational contributions are integral and critical to the overall functioning of armed groups.

► Third, girls in fighting forces contend with overwhelming experiences of victimization, perpetration, and insecurity. During conflict, girls are subjected to grave violations of their human rights through forced recruitment, killing, maiming, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, abduction, forced marriage, and increased exposure to HIV/AIDS. Many are also forced to participate in brutal acts of violence. In the aftermath of conflict, girls arguably bear a form of secondary victimization through socio-economic marginalization and exclusion, as well as the ongoing threats to their health and personal security.

► Finally, girls in fighting forces are not simply silent victims, but active agents and resisters during armed conflict. Girls’ made remarkable attempts to defend and protect themselves during situations of severe violence and insecurity, as well as efforts to bring about change for themselves and by themselves. Challenging the predominant portrayals of girls as emblematic victims, girls attempted to avoid, minimize, or resist wartime abuses, patriarchal power structures, and the culture of violence that surrounded them.

In light of these research findings, an alternative approach is essential -- one that gives due regard to the ways in which girls in fighting forces are perceived, represented, and conceptualized.

Rather than focusing solely on girls’ vulnerability and victimization, it is essential also to direct our attention to their self-efficacy, resilience, and skills. Moreover, given their significant presence and multiple roles within fighting forces, girls’ experiences and perspectives should be considered as central and indispensable to understandings and analyses of war and political violence, and not regarded as peripheral or, unwittingly or wittingly, rendered invisible.

On this day

On March 29, ...
... 1973 (35 years ago today), American troops withdrew fully from South Vietnam (right). In the long years of U.S. involvement in the Indochinese country, "the cost to the United States has been almost 46,000 men killed and more than 300,000 wounded," according to the New York Times. It further reported that the war was "unfinished" and had "deeply scarred" both Vietnam and the United States, and that among the departing troops "[t]here was little emotion or joy as they brought to a close almost a decade of American military intervention."
... 2002, Sierra Leone's Parliamant enacted Special Court Agreement, 2002 (Ratification) Act, thus setting the stage for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a hybrid tribunal charged with trying persons believed most responsible for atrocities during the civil war that wracked the country in the 1990s. As we've posted, among those now on trial before the Court is Charles Taylor (left), former President of Liberia. Recently, a witness before the Court testified that troops cannibalized captives -- including U.N. peacekeepers -- on Taylor's orders.

A new kind of war crimes trial for Sierra Leone

At last, the trial of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, began today before the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Taylor stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for supporting and directing the Revolutionary United Front, one of the militias that committed atrocities in Sierra Leone, in exchange for Sierra Leone’s coveted diamonds. (See our prior posts about the trial here.) What makes this trial different than the others already held by the Special Court? After all, the Court’s other prosecutions have been targeted at government officials and militia leaders, in keeping with the understanding that responsibility for atrocities should extend beyond the immediate perpetrators to those who planned and directed the acts.
But this trial targets a different category of accomplices: outsiders who finance and arm militias in full knowledge of their atrocities, either for direct financial benefit (e.g., payoffs of diamonds) or to profit indirectly from the opportunities to seize land and natural resources that are presented by the resulting mayhem (e.g., control of the mines themselves). This kind of outside support radically escalated the level, extent, and duration of violence against civilians in Sierra Leone’s conflict (and has done so elsewhere as well, for example in the Democratic Republic of Congo). Thus, this prosecution is similar in some ways to the ongoing series of Alien Tort Claims Act lawsuits in the US against corporations who knowingly involve themselves in and profit from human rights violations abroad (prior post here), as it seeks to extend liability to the profiteers of international crimes against civilians.
Can the prosecution succeed in proving a direct link between Taylor’s support and the RUF’s misdeeds? Tying such acts to distant leaders is always difficult, and some argue that the available circumstantial evidence here may be insufficient here. But regardless of the eventual verdict in the Taylor case, this effort to extend responsibility to those who knowingly support and profit from war crimes and crimes against humanity is a welcome development.

On October 22,

... 1999, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1270, which established the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, a country torn apart by a decade of civil war. The UNAMSIL complement was to include 6,000 military troops, among them 260 military observers. This mission was completed in December 2005; today the "United Nations Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) ... help[s] consolidate peace in the country."
... 1958, Blanche Margaret Meagher (right), formerly a high school teacher, was appointed Ambassador to Israel, making her Canada's 1st woman Ambassador. She held the position until 1961; thereafter she served as Ambassador to Austria and to Sweden. She was Canada's governor on, and later chairman of, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and also helped negotiate the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and the People's Republic of China. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1911, Meagher died in her hometown in 1999.

On September 22, ...

... 1927 (80 years ago today), Britain's "colonial government declared the abolishment of slavery in Sierra Leone," where for a century the capital, Freetown, had been a hub for British anti-slave-trading activities. (For an analysis of how the recent, relatively trouble-free election and inauguration of Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma may augur a "splash of good news" about Africa, see here.)
... 1868, Louise Crummy McKinney (right) was born in Frankville, Ontario. Trained as a teacher, in 1903 she became a Canada-based organizer of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Elected to the Albert legislature in 1917, she became the 1st woman legislator in the British Empire. She took part in an appeal to the Privy Council through which women won the right to become Senators. McKinney died in Claresholm, Alberta, in 1931. "Her gravestone reads only 'Mother.'"

On August 14, ...

... 2000, by its Resolution 1315, the U.N. Security Council authorized Secretary-General Kofi Annan to negotiate, with the government of Sierra Leone, the establishment of a mixed national-international tribunal for adjudication of crimes arising out of the civil war of the 1990s. Established 2 years later was the Special Court for Sierra Leone. As posted here, here, and here, the Court issued its 1st 2 judgments earlier this summer.
... 1929, U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) was born in Lynch, Kentucky.

Another mixed verdict from Sierra Leone

Garnering far less fanfare than the 1st judgment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone was its 2d judgment, delivered last Thursday at the hybrid tribunal's courthouse in Freetown. The prior judgment, as IntLawGrrl Beth VanSchaack demonstrated, did not accept some of the allegations pressed by the prosecution. Spanning 438 pages, this judgment too was a mixed verdict.
With the 2 international judges, Presiding Justice Benjamin Mutanga Itoe of Cameroon and Justice Pierre G. Boutet of Canada, in the majority, Trial Chamber I voted 2-to-1 to convict 2 former leaders of the Civil Defence Forces militia that fought on behalf of the Government of Sierra Leone during that country's civil war. Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa both were found guilty of murder, cruel treatment, and collective punishments. Kondewa further was found guilty of recruiting for combat children under age 15, but Fofana was acquitted of that charge. In addition, both men were found not guilty on 2 counts of crimes against humanity and 1 of war crimes. Each of the 3 Justices filed a separate opinion; dissenting Justice Rosolu John Bankole Thompson, appointed by the government of Sierra Leone, would have acquitted both defendants of all charges.
Trial had begun in June 2004 against 3 men, but the 3d defendant died in February. He was Sam Hinga Norman, Sierra Leone's Interior Minister at the time of his indictment.
Depicting the government's use of child soldiers is Ishmael Beah's bestselling memoir A Long Way Gone, discussed here.
(photo of child soldier in Sierra Leone courtesy of IRIN, the Integrated Regional Information Networks of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

Forced Marriage: The Facts Don't Fit The Crime

In a recent 631-page decision, Prosecutor v. Alex Tamba Brima et al. (Case No. SCSL-04-16-T) mentioned earlier in this blog, Trial Chamber II of the Special Court for Sierra Leone refused to recognize a discrete offense of forced marriage as either a crime against humanity or a war crime. In so doing, the Court rejected innovative arguments by prosecutors that a crime of forced marriage existed independently of related war crimes and crimes against humanity of rape, sexual slavery, imprisonment, forced labor, and enslavement.
The concept of forced marriage was not a theory originally conceived of by feminist academics or advocates; rather, it came from victims themselves. As the story goes, prosecutors interviewing victims of the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone heard innumerable stories of gang-rape and other forms of sexual violence. Other women, however, described their experience using the vocabulary of marriage. The trial testimony of witness TF1-094 is indicative. TF1-094 was about 12 when her village was raided by rebels. Her parents were killed. She survived, because one Andrew intervened to “save her.” Saving her meant first raping her and then taking her along with him to act as his “wife” (also known by the unfortunate term “bush wife”)—doing laundry and other chores and traveling with his unit as the theatre of war shifted. On cross-examination, she admitted that Andrew generally “care[d] for her.” Andrew was ultimately killed in combat. Other women stayed with their “husbands” post-conflict, often because they knew no other life and had no other life to return to. The rest of the Judgement’s Factual Findings are equally as harrowing.
Through pleading vagaries in the Brima Indictment, the “forced marriage” allegations were adjudicated as the war crime of “outrages upon personal dignity” under Article 3(e) of the Special Court Statute. Exemplifying the normative redundancy of international criminal law, the Prosecutor had also originally charged forced marriage as the residual crime against humanity of “other inhuman acts” under Article 2(i) of the Statute. The Special Court ruled, however, that that provision “must logically be restrictively interpreted as applying only to acts of a non-sexual nature amounting to an affront to human dignity” in light of the “exhaustive category of sexual crimes particularised in Article 2(g) of the Statute,” viz. rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and any other form of sexual violence. At the same time, the Court dismissed charges under Article 2(g) as duplicitous, because the Prosecutor did not adhere to the rule of one count, one offense. So, Article 3(e) remained the only “hook” on which the forced marriage allegations could hang. All these machinations in the judgment were after Trial Chamber I had earlier allowed the Prosecution to amend the Indictment to add the forced marriage allegations.
In its Judgement, the Court rejected the notion of forced marriage as a separate and distinct crime. The ruling is arguably based solely on the evidence presented, as the Court determined that the Prosecutor had not established a non-sexual crime of forced marriage that did not wholly overlap with the crime of “sexual slavery” as “[n]ot one of the victims of sexual slavery gave evidence that the mere fact that a rebel had declared her to be his wife had caused her any particular trauma, whether physical or mental.” In other words, the crime of sexual slavery subsumed every case of “bush marriage” presented. The Court went farther, however, in rejecting the very concept when it ruled that even if there had been such evidence, forced marriage would not amount to a crime against humanity because it is not of similar gravity to the other acts set forth in Article 2 of the Statute. The Court left open the question of whether forced marriage could still constitute a war crime, which may not require a heightened showing of harm to all of humanity. All defendants were found guilty under Count 9 for the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity.
Justice Teresa Doherty (left, from Northern Ireland) wrote a compelling dissent. She argued that the phenomenon of forced marriage within the context of the Sierra Leone civil war was distinguishable from the crime of sexual slavery as well as other forms of arguably forced marriage, such as arranged marriages or inheritance marriages, that may implicate human rights norms but not international criminal law.
So often, women’s reality is not acknowledged until it is named. Unlike other international prosecutorial teams—who have been critiqued for failing to elicit, overlooking, ignoring, discrediting, and not pursuing women’s stories of sexual violence in their investigations and indictments—the Special Court’s Prosecutor was clearly listening to women. This Trial Chamber, however, missed an opportunity to acknowledge the lived experience of women and to harness the expressive function of the law. The charge of sexual slavery alone fails to capture the full culpability of the accused and the total experience of the victim who finds herself trapped in a life not of her choosing, saddled with an irreversible conjugal status and innumerable “conjugal duties.” The case lends further credence to the astute observation of Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon (right) that “Women are violated in ways that men are not, or rarely are.” It also provides further evidence of how powerless women may be to control their fates in times of war. One is left to hope that the Prosecution maintains its commitment to the women of Sierra Leone and appeals the Trial Chamber's ruling as a matter of law.

[Posted by IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack]

Special Court for Sierra Leone: 1st verdicts

The mixed national-international tribunal set up in the wake of Sierra Leone's civil war returned its 1st verdicts yesterday, finding 3 rebel leaders guilty on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This 1st judgment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone also constituted the 1st international convictions for conscripting child soldiers and forced marriage as crimes against humanity. (A pathbreaking work on the 2d crime is Forced Marriage: Rwanda’s Secret Revealed, 7 UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 197 (2001), by Monika Kalra Varma).
Reading the verdict at yesterday's session was Justice Julia Sebutinde (left) of Uganda, Presiding Judge of Trial Chamber II. The other members of the panel -- now adjudicating charges against former Liberian President Charles Taylor -- were Justices Teresa Doherty (right) of Northern Ireland and Richard Lussick of Samoa.
In the instant case, Trial Chamber II adjudged defendants Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara, and Santigie Borbor Kanu. Each had helped lead the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, which, along with the Revolutionary United Front, had wreaked mayhem in the Western African country throughout much of the 1990s. The Court reports that in addition to crimes just mentioned, these 3 also were found guilty of acts of terrorism, collective punishments, murder as a crime against humanity, murder as a war crime, rape. outrages upon personal dignity, physical violence as a war crime, enslavement, and sexual slavery and other sexual violence. (The 631-page judgment's available here.)
Allowing that the judgment's "'a positive signal,'' Amnesty International urged greater accountability for the atrocities of Sierra Leone's civil war; that is, more prosecutions of persons believed responsible, as well as compensation for victims of the violence.

On June 15, ...

... 1907 (100 years ago today), 44 states came together at the Hague for the Second International Peace Conference, convened by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (left) at the urging of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Among the issues to be discussed at the conference, which would continue through October 15, was establishment of a mechanism for peaceful settlement of disputes.
... 1992 (15 years ago today), the U.S. Supreme Court held in United States v. Alvarez-Machain that the fact that U.S. law enforcement agents had effected the U.S. court appearance of a Mexican physician by means of a cross-border kidnapping did not bar his prosecution on federal criminal charges. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for a majority that because the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty did not forbid forcible abduction, it did not prohibit it, and, moreover, that the method of securing presence at trial did not offend constitutional due process. Dissenting on both scores, Justice John Paul Stevens also argued that the act was contrary to international law. The case drew formal objections not only from Mexico, but also from the United States' neighbor to the north, Canada.