'Nuff said

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

... The Court essentially concludes that international custom requires that international(ized) tribunals try international crimes, whereas national courts can have jurisdiction only if such crimes had already been incorporated into national law when they were committed.
The assertion of such a custom is difficult to harmonize with a whole range of cases in which national courts have retroactively asserted jurisdiction over international crimes. ...

-- Jan Arno Hessbruegge, who works as a legal advisor for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a personal-capacity ASIL Insight on the November 2010 judgment of the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Union of West African States in Hissein Habré c. République du Sénégal. We've posted here, here, and here about the court of ECOWAS, a regional organization whose members include not only Senegal, but also Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Hessbruegge's Insight is skeptical about the reasoning of the ECOWAS Court in this case. And he rightly points out that it raises the potential for conflicting judgments in cases involving former Chadian dictator Habré -- not necessarily the 2009 decision of the African Court of Human and People's Rights about which we've posted, but rather the eventual judgment in Questions relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v. Senegal), pending before the International Court of Justice. (credit for © 2005 Madjiasra Nako/IRIN photo of "[w]idows protest[ing] in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, demanding the extradition of Hissène Habré to Belgium to face charges of crimes against humanity")

Darfur/Chad. Genocide?

In Chad as in Sudan, those in power have problems of legitimacy. To maintain the conflict is for them the surest way to avoid shouldering their responsibilities.

-- Conclusion to "Guerre sans fin," a superb editorial in Le Monde. The essay begins by noting that anticipation of the arrival of annual rains, which largely preclude fighting, has once again stepped up combat on either side of the border between eastern Chad and the western Sudan region of Darfur. Even as some rebels prepare to attack the government of Chadian President Idriss Déby (left) from camps just across the border in Sudan, other rebels prepared to attack that of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (right) from camps in Chad. Anti-Déby rebels receive support from the government of Bashir, while anti-Bashir rebels receive support from that of Déby, Le Monde alleges, adding that neither Khartoum nor N'Djamena wishes to make war openly. Meanwhile, destitution reigns throughout the border region. The edito:
► Reminds of the complexity of naming the crisis "genocide" (a complexity creating a somewhat different set of problems in Cambodia, as today's post above details), as the United States but not many others have done. A recent Los Angeles Times article detailed the debate and posed the unanswered question of what international inertia means in the face of claims that Darfur is this century's 1st genocide.
► Underscores the need, about which we've posted in the past, for a regional solution to problems at this embattled frontier.

(credit for 2008 photo of Déby by Agence France-Presse/Karim Sahib; credit for 2009 photo of Bashir)

Call for regional approach to Darfur

Often "Darfur" appears as some disembodied phenomenon -- a crisis out of context.
In fact, of course, the word is shorthand for a complex, multiyear, multilayered conflict. Violence occurs not in some stand-alone time and space, but rather against the backdrop of issues that span all of Sudan.
Even this broad a view is too narrow. Just as violence in Darfur must be considered within the context of Sudan, troubles in Sudan must be considered within the context of the northern/eastern quadrant of Africa.
Thus in "Beyond Band-Aids for Darfur," a Huffington Post op-ed, our colleague Monika Kalra Varma recently argued:

A strong U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Major General Scott Gration, has been named, sending a message to Khartoum, but an equally strong message must be sent to Chad. The new administration must entrust Maj. Gen. Gration with a broad mandate to confront the interrelated problems in both Sudan and Chad to find regional solutions for peace, similar to the current approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan. He must be able to deal with all actors in the region, including not only governments and rebels, but also tribal, civil society, refugee and IDP leaders.

This call for a regional approach by Varma, Director for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, reflects a policy paper that the RFK Center issued during the recent U.S. visits of 2 of its Human Rights Laureates, Delphine Djiraibe, a Chadian attorney and human rights advocate, and Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah, a Darfuri physician. (Am honored to note that among the places that Dr. Mohammed Ahmed visited was the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he gave a public talk and met privately with the 40-plus students who are taking part in a CILC-RFK partnership aimed at developing a framework for peace and reconciliation processes.) Entitled "The Need for a Regional Approach to Solve the Crisis in Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic," the paper notes the sad statistics respecting deaths and displacement in Darfur, and stresses that the negative consequences of conflict cross borders into Chad and Central African Republic. Accordingly, the paper contends, peace negotiations must engage all 3 countries. Such negotiations, moreover, must bring to the table not only the government and rebels, but also tribal and other leaders in civil society.
A key component of any such effort, both Varma's op-ed and the policy paper maintain, is U.S. expansion of the special envoy's mandate to assure that Darfur is considered in comprehensive context.

(credit for 2007 BBC regional map)

On April 8

On this day in ....
... 1904 (105 years ago today), Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, the British Foreign Secretary known as Lord Lansdowne (left), and French Ambassador Paul Cambon (right) signed an instrument titled, in English, the "Declaration between the United Kingdom and France Respecting Egypt and Morocco, Together with the Secret Articles Signed at the Same Time," but commonly known as the Entente Cordiale. The bilateral treaty signed in London settled lingering colonial disputes and established a "diplomatic understanding" without fully committing to mutual defense. Motivating the initiative was apprehension about German militarism; thus the Entente is a precursor to World War I.
... 2004 (5 years ago today), at N'Djamena, Chad, representatives of Sudan and 2 rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Sudan Justice and Equality Movement, signed a Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement, in which they pledged to stop fighting in Darfur. Violence in that province, in western Sudan and at Chad's eastern border, continues to this day, as our posts on Darfur make evident.

(Prior April 8 posts are here and here.)

(Wo)Manifesto From Darfur

This week brought news of worsening conditions in the Darfur region. Woes have long extended to refugee camps in Chad as well. While all displaced Darfuris have suffered during weeks like this, the plight of Darfuri women has garnered particular attention throughout the conflict. It is in this context that Physicians for Human Rights recently launched a new blog, DarfuriWomen.
The website features entries from PHR staffers who work with the organization’s Darfur Survival Campaign, video of life in refugee camps sheltering displaced Darfuri people and messages from blog readers.
The most striking feature of the blog is a document entitled the Farchana Manifesto. Authored by a group of 8 Darfuri women who live in the Farchana camp in Eastern Chad, the document is a rare expression of the thoughts, feelings and outrage of this otherwise marginalized population. While the horrors endured by displaced Darfuri women have been well documented by outside observers, the Farchana Manifesto was written by women camp residents following a particularly brutal attack in which 7 unmarried, pregnant women living in the camp were herded together, tied up, and beaten publicly on charges that they'd engaged in prostitution -- when, according to the Physicians for Human Rights, they were likely raped. In response, the authors of the Farchana Manifesto, relay the “concerns and problems” faced by women living in the camp. Unlike the countless NGO and UN reports about violence against displaced Darfuri women, the Farchana Manifesto reflects the voices of Darfuri women themselves. It cites many problems, among them:
► lack of free movement;
► restrictions on education;
► forced marriages; and
► deprivation of property.
Unsurprisingly, many of these problems reflect violations of several major human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Never let it be said that this is a group that needs to be educated about its rights!
Kudos to Physicians for Human Rights for providing the Farchana women a platform by which their crucial words can be heard. As the women write in their manifesto, one of Farchana’s problems is a

'[l]ack of opportunity for freedom of speech, and no one listens to what women say.'

Hopefully, with the release of the Farchana Manifesto, that will begin to change.

(credit for © Jane Beesley/Oxfam photo of women waiting for food distribution at Farchana, a camp in Chad filled with refugees from Darfur.)

Death in absentia at home; trial abroad awaits

Le Monde reports that former Chadian President Hissène Habré (dressed in white in the photo at left) was convicted of crimes against humanity and yesterday sentenced to death by a criminal court in N'Djamena, Chad's capital city. But the defendant was not present: he's been in exile in Senegal since 1991.
"Africa's Pinochet" is the nickname that Human Rights Watch gave Habré, whose government is said to have "carried out some 40,000 politically motivated murders and 200,000 cases of torture" from when he seized power in 1982 and when he was deposed in 1990. That NGO maintains a Case against Habré webpage replete with documents and other links.
The premier situs for that case has not been Chad, however. Senegal indicted him, but its courts initially rebuffed the prosecution. Then Belgium issued an international arrest warrant. Senegal thus sought to extradite Habré, but its courts against rebuffed the effort. Then, in 2006, the African Union "[m]andate[d] the Republic of Senegal to prosecute and ensure that Hissène Habré is tried, on behalf of Africa, by a competent Senegalese court with guarantees for fair trial." And now? According to Le Monde,

Senegal's Minister of Justice, Madické Niang, indicated in July, after the country's legislature modified its Constitution to permit such a proceeding, that Dakar was 'ready' for the trial of Habré.

(credit for 2000 photo)

For Zoe's Ark 6, 8 years in a French prison

The 6 French nationals convicted in Chad of trying to kidnap to Europe more than a hundred children they said were Darfurian orphans -- but who, as we've posted, were in fact Chadian children with families -- received "substitute" sentences from a French judge today.
A Chadian court had sentenced Zoe's Ark workers Eric Breteau, Emilie Lelouch, Alain Péligat, Philippe van Winkelberg, Dominique Aubry, and Nadia Merimi to 8 years of forced labor. They were then transferred, pursuant to a France-Chad treaty signed in 1976, back to Paris. There le tribunal correctionnel de Créteil gave them, as a substitute, 8 years in French prison. The court did not seem to have been moved by defense counsel's argument "stigmatizing" the Chadian judgment as having been "produced by a 'totalitarian' country."

Zoe's Ark crew home, but not free

Half a world way from the Adelaide prison where David Hicks went free yesterday (see above), 6 French nationals arrived in Paris to serve sentences they'd received earlier in the week in Chad.
As we've posted, the 6 workers for L'Arche de Zoé (Zoe's Ark), and were arrested in October as they tried to leave Chad with 103 children who they claimed were Darfurian orphans destined for adoption in Europe. The children turned out, however, be Chadian non-orphans.
The 6 workers were convicted and sentenced to 8 years' hard labor. (A Sudanese and Chadian convicted of complicity remained in Chad.) The sentences of the 6 are expected to be "adjusted" in France, which also may open its own investigation into the incident.
As for the children, they remain in orphanages in Chad, and have yet to be reunited with their families.

"Zoe's Ark" update

The 18 persons arrested after trying to fly from Chad to France with more than 100 children -- mostly Chadians with at least 1 living parent, but whom the arrestees claimed were orphans from Darfur (posts here) -- appeared this week before a Chadian investigating judge. Although allegations against many were dropped, charges against the 6 French nationals of the organization known as L'Arche de Zoé, or Zoe's Ark, were retained and, indeed, expanded, so that now they include:
► kidnapping of minors with an eye to compromising their civil status
► 2 types of fraud
► false writings
2 others are charged with complicity; all defendants, some of whom now are on hunger strike, face up to 20 years' forced labor if convicted.

Child Abduction in Chad - Are the Prospective Adopters Morally Liable?

Further to Diane’s post here, nine people have now been charged with child abduction and fraud in respect of the operations of ‘Zoe’s Arc’ along the Chadian border (RTE News). Those nine are French nationals and Spanish crew members of the plane that was to fly the 103 children to Europe are also charged as accessories to the alleged crime. If it is found that this organization was, in effect, trafficking children to Europe for the purposes of adoption by families there who had each paid in the region of 2000 Euro then this raises – once more – the manner in which children are quickly becoming one of the most alarming commodities in Europe.

The trafficking of children from Africa for the purposes of sexual slavery and pornography is already well documented, but trafficking for the purposes of adoption and – as it seems likely also happens – organ harvesting is now becoming more prominent. In the case of adoption, at least, it is interesting to consider what the liability of those families who had intended to try to adopt these children would be – would it matter whether they knew that at least some of the children would appear not to actually be orphans but to be children who were separated from their families and could be reunified by the ICRC or similar agencies in the future? Would it, indeed, matter to their liability if they were aware that adoption is unlawful in both Chad and Darfur and therefore there would not seem to have been a domestic legal basis for the activities of the organization even if – as we must reasonably assume until such time as we are shown otherwise – they were acting bona fide?

The case, therefore, raises not only questions as to the impact of the proliferation of ‘NGOs’ on populations in the areas in which they operate, but also about the moral and legal liabilities of those who support these NGOs either financially or, in a case like this, by means of providing the ‘market’ for their work.

Abduction, adoption, and international law

Still in custody: 9 French citizens "wearing T-shirts with the slogan 'Children Rescue'" and 7 Spanish plane crewmembers in flight suits. The 16 were seized Thursday as they were readying to fly from Abéché, near Chad's border with the Darfur region of Sudan, to an airport near Rheims, France. With them at the time of arrest were 103 children, all under 9 years old.
The French detainees are affiliated with l'Arche de Zoé (Zoe's Ark). That NGO, whose website's a call to alarm over Darfur, maintained that the children were the 1st of 1,000 young refugees whom it planned to take away from the conflict in Darfur so that they might live with families in Europe that'd "each paid about €1,400 for the right to care for the children," according to London's Times; the International Herald Tribune put the amount at "€2,400, or nearly $3,500, per child."
The Times called it a "fiasco"; that seems a mild way to describe the operation, attempted just days before peace talks on Darfur were about to begin. (The talks began yesterday with Sudan's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire.) Chad's President, Idriss Deby, called it "a kidnapping, pure and simple," and promised severe punishment. French Minister for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Rama Yade (left) called the operation "illegal and irresponsible," stating that back in July all NGOs working in Darfur with whom she met agreed unanimously to condemn the operation. Laws on children and immigration were not followed; indeed, adoption's not even legal in Sudan and Chad. Not all the children may be from Darfur; some may be Chadians. And based on initial interviews with the children themselves, said Jacques Hintzy, President of UNICEF-France, not all in fact are orphans.
As international organizations and national governments registered denunciations, the children remained in limbo in Chad, receiving temporary care from UNICEF, the International Red Cross, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Rather than a peculiar event without ramification much beyond its facts, this was, according to a U.N. release, "not an isolated incident but one that was highly visible because of the size of the group of children." Problems have arisen across the globe, not only in African countries, but also in, for example, Cambodia and Guatemala. As might be expected, there's a treaty designed to avoid some of those problems. The Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption -- commonly called the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (logo at right) -- was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1995. Yet today less than 1/3 of the world's countries are states parties, and many of the states that have experienced problems are nonparties. The United States signed but hasn't ratified, though it passed legislation in 2000 aimed at implementing some of the treaty's provisions.
It'll require many more ratifications, and much more enforcement, before this international law has the desired effect.

Sexual violence in Central African Republic

Having completed "preliminary analysis" pursuant to state referral, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo (left) announced today that his office has opened an investigation of violence against civilians of the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003. It is the 1st investigation "in which allegations of sexual crimes far outnumber alleged killings"; according to Moreno, "'The information we have now suggests that the rape of civilians was committed in numbers that cannot be ignored under international law.'”

The Prosecutor sounded a cautionary note: new violence at the country's borders with Chad and Sudan may hamper investigation. In short, more than adjudicative intervention is needed to quell criminality in the region; whether more will come remains to be seen.