The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law? Maybe not quite yet . . .

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Leila Nadya Sadat, who contributes this guest post from Paris)

This week, unexpectedly, the Security Council voted unanimously to refer the situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court. That is cause for celebration; but celebration tempered with a strong dose of caution and even some real pessimism about the future.
On the plus side, the ICC is now becoming an international institution that is increasingly seen as a real partner in the maintenance of international peace and security.
Also, on the plus side, as Diane Marie Amann mentioned in an earlier IntLawGrrls post, the U.S. voted for the Resolution, rather than simply abstaining from vetoing it as the U.S. had done with Resolution 1593, referring to the Court the situation in Darfur.
Finally, I entitled this blog entry after my 2002 book of the same name, because one sees in the Resolution glimmers of change — that war is not the only answer to international conflict, that law is a relevant consideration in its resolution and that justice may be a possibility. That would be cause for celebration indeed.
At the same time, there are many worrisome elements in the Resolution which bode ill for the Court and for the referral. The Resolution itself retains two outrageous Bush-administration provisions (while admittedly discarding a third).
First, while deciding in paragraph 5 that the Libyan authorities “shall cooperate fully with and provide any necessary assistance to the Court and the Prosecutor” (even though Libya is not a State Party to the Court) the paragraph continues that “States not party to the Rome Statute have no obligation under the Statute. . . ” and, in paragraph 6, “decides, that national, current or former officials or personnel from a State outside [Libya] . . . shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of that State” for any acts they may commit relating to UN operations in Libya. What an extraordinary display of double standards, given that several members of the Council who voted for the Resolution are not parties to the Rome Statute! Can a rule of law be a rule of law if it applies to some but not all?
The Resolution also provides that the ICC, not the United Nations, shall bear all the expenses relating to the referral, apparently as a way of appeasing the U.S. Congress, many of whose members continue to threaten the Court. So the United States and other non-Party States (China, India, Russia) are using — but not paying for — the ICC as a tool of coercive diplomacy. This is not good news.
Finally, the ICC is already struggling to convince African states that it is not a Court directed at them. The first four referrals all seemed quite sensible; but the fifth, the situation involving Kenya, was far more troublesome, given that the Prosecutor undertook the case on his own initiative, and at least some questioned whether it met the legal standards necessary in terms of subject matter jurisdiction, gravity and complementarity to be pursued at the ICC rather than in Kenya or otherwise. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts available here.) There were also serious questions raised at last summer's ICC Review Conference at Kampala as to whether it would not be preferable to see a proprio motu referral of the Colombia or Afghan situations. A sixth referral involving an African state — even in a case involving the clear commission of atrocities — may encourage the ICC’s detractors in Africa, and the double standards evinced by the Resolution’s text do not assist in this regard.
In the view of this writer, the Libya referral, in and of itself, is a good thing. The atrocities taking place as reported in the media seem clearly to warrant ICC intervention. But the failure of the great powers to fully support this Court, and to use it cynically when and as they please, rather than committing their money, time, energy and political support to helping it grow strong and endure, feeds the perception that this Court is not about justice, but about power, undermining its legitimacy. Thomas Friedman recently opined that President Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo (above) strengthened the case for democracy in the Arab world as he led others through the salutary example of his own life. Would that Obama will find the same courage to champion the International Criminal Court, and to show the world that Americans believe in accountability too.

(Cross-posted at Leila's An American in Paris blog)

Guest Blogger: Monika Kalra Varma

Honored to welcome Monika Kalra Varma (right) as IntLawGrrls' guest blogger today.
Monika is the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., where she develops and oversees programming, day-to-day operations, longterm strategies. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.)
Since joining the center in 2002, she's spearheaded innovative economic and social rights advocacy, including efforts to hold international actors accountable for extraterritorial economic rights violations. Advocacy campaigns she's led have targeted the United Nations and its member states, various branches of the U.S. government, members of the Organization of American States and other regional bodies, international financial institutions, and corporations.
Monika serves on the editorial board of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, published by the Harvard-based François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and she is a steering committee member of the Lawyers Emergency Response Network for Haiti. She is also a member of the advisory board for the Global India Fund.
She speaks regularly with policymakers and members of civil society about domestic and international human rights issues, and has published commentary in, to name a few, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Jurist.
Today she contributes to IntLawGrrls. Monika's guest post below discusses her recent visit to Western Sahara as part of an RFK Center delegation -- a visit that produced a just-published report.
Prior to joining the RFK Center, Monika worked at The Hague. As a legal officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, she was a member of the trial team which secured the ICTY's first indictment and eventual conviction of the crime of terror. Accused, and eventually convicted, was General Stanislav Galić, the Serb military commander in Sarajevo from 1992-1994.
Monika earned her B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego, and her J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Indeed, I'm proud to say that she is a former student of mine, and the author while a student of a pathbreaking article, "Forced Marriage: Rwanda’s Secret Revealed," 7 University of California Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 197 (2001). We're been honored to name her a featured alumna on the website of our California International Law Center at King Hall, and also to work with her on the Darfur Project (described in posts available here) undertaken jointly between CILC and the RFK Center.
A truly heartfelt welcome!

On January 19

On this day in ...
... 1966 (45 years ago today), the daughter of India's 1st prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, became the 1st woman to serve as Prime Minister of India. She was 48-year-old Indira Gandhi, whom the ruling Congress Party had "chosen at the end of a bitter leadership battle." Gandhi promised to

'strive to create what my father used to call a climate of peace.'

Yet as we've posted, her tenure -- from 1966 to 1977, and again from 1980 to 1984 -- would be marred by the violent struggle that led to the founding of Bangladesh, to conviction on corruption charges followed by a national state of emergency, to the storming of a temple held by Sikh militants, and finally to her assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards.


(Prior January 19 posts are here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

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

Leaders from Britain, the United States, France and China -- along with Russia, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- have all visited India in the last six months, securing contracts worth a total of around $50 billion.

-- A Reuters report today from New Delhi, where Dmitry Medvedev, President of one of the P-5 countries listed in the snippet, declared Russia's support for giving India a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. (image credit) Medvedev's announcement follows the New Delhi statement earlier this month, when President Nicolas Sarkozy said France too now supports adding India as a "P-6" -- not to mention President Barack Obama's announcement in November, as we then posted, that "a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member" is the United States' goal as well. The lining up of these ducks in a row makes for a fascinating study in politico-market emergence.

On November 15

On this day in ...
... 1866, Cornelia Sorabji (right) was born into a family of 9 children in what was then called the Bombay Presidency in India. Her father was a Parsi Christian missionary; her mother, the founder of schools for girls. Following her own education in India, in 1892, Sorabji was specially permitted to take the examination for a Bachelor of Civil Laws Oxford University -- the 1st woman ever to do so. She returned to India 2 years later and began a career concentrated on changing laws that discriminated against women. Among her many books were Between the Twilights: Being Studies of Indian Women by One of Themselves (1908) and India Calling: The Memories of Cornelia Sorabji, India's First Woman Barrister (published posthumously in 2001). After retirement she moved to London, where she died in 1954. As IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Mary Dudziak posted recently at her Legal History Blog, Sorabji's life is the subject of an article by Professor Mary Jane Mossman of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada.


(Prior November 15 posts are here, here, and here.)

Breaking: Obama for India as P-6

At a speech before India's Parliament today, President Barack Obama said:

The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate. That is why I can say today — in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.

The Associated Press plays down the announcement, calling it a "diplomatic gesture," and The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg stresses the time and difficulties ahead.

Still, this is huge.

The announcement not only recognizes, as Obama said, that "India has emerged," but also signals a willingness to discuss in a realignment of the Council that inevitably would engage all the countries of the world -- the many other aspirants to a "P-" seat as well the other "-4" who've held that plum since 1945.

'Nuff said

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

Reena SenGupta [right], a London-based consultant, says she used to see foreign-owned legal research operations in India where beds, not desks, greeted the visitor; such was the keenness to dispel the impression that law was being practised.

-- Unsigned Economist article on "Law and globalisation." The article discusses the very high hurdle to the admission of foreign lawyers in India following Bombay High Court decision issued last December -- as well as barriers that exist in many other countries, including Canada. (Hat tip to my California-Davis colleague Jack Ayer, doyen of Underbelly blog.)

On October 16

On this day in ...
... 1905 (105 years ago today), a Partition of Bengal took effect, having been announced 3 months earlier by George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of what then was the British colony of India. Located in the northeast region of the subcontinent, at the bay of the same name. Bengal province was about the size of the country of France. (map credit) But it had a population of more than 80 million people, many more than France. Opposition to the partition led to its annulment in 1911. Today 1 area within the region is the country of Bangladesh; another is part of the country of India.

(Prior October 16 posts are here, here, and here.)

On August 28

On this day in ...
... 1934, Sujata Manohar (right) was born into a family of jurists. Following graduation from college in Bombay, she would read philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, then be called to the Bar. Manohar returned to India and practiced law, often representing legal aid clients in family law matters. In 1978, she became the 1st woman appointed to the bench, and in 1994, the 1st woman Chief Justice, of the High Court of Bombay. She then was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and retired in 1999. Manohar was the 2d of 4 women who've held that position. She currently serves as a member of India's National Human Rights Commission.


(Prior August 28 posts are here, here, and here.)

Human Rights & Business: Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Nadia Bernaz, who contributes this guest post)

With BP making the headlines with the industrial disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (prior IntLawGrrls posts), many have been asking the question of how and whether giant corporations can be made accountable for their actions.
The fact is that a combination common in the Western world -- tighter laws governing pollution and higher standards -- has not worked. Rather, it has often meant that multinational corporations, which no longer have to respect national boundaries, move elsewhere, where standards are lax and land and labour is cheap.
The growing movement for volunteerism among corporate entities based on corporate social responsibility has had some benefit: it has highlighted the social responsibility that companies have when they invest in a given area. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts) However, it has also allowed many corporations to engage in green-washing their image through the display of sophisticated policies printed in expensive brochures.
A new story that has attracted some attention recently concerns the activities of the Vedanta mining concern, one of Britain’s largest companies, who have built an aluminium producing plant in Orissa, in the east of India. Vedanta now wishes to mine bauxite in the region in order to get the plant running at full capacity.
Orissa is one of India’s least developed states, with some of the poorest people in the world, with many indigenous tribes among them. It has been known for a long time that this part of India holds significant deposits of mineral resources, but with India speeding towards accelerated development, these resources have suddenly become crucial to sustaining growth.
Vedanta maintain that their mining activities would bring jobs and increasing wealth to the local population. However, the indigenous Dongria Kondh tribe strongly oppose mining in their sacred mountains, and are concerned about the environmental impact of this activity in the region. An Amnesty International report issued in February supports their view.) The tribal members argue that they do not want to change their ancestral way of life, and have no interest in the type of development Vedanta has promised them. (credit for photo by Parth Sanyal /Reuters, captioned "A tribal woman with her child near the mining site of the alumina refinery in Orissa state")
From an international legal perspective, the Vedanta story raises several important issues:
► The increased power of transnational corporations has made the seeking of accountability for their actions extremely difficult in environments where they may be able to operate freely, and often with the complicity of the government.
► While globalisation itself cannot be regulated, it is clear that new norm creation activities have been taking place in international law, not least with the presence of the World Trade Organisation.
► However, little of the ethos concerning human development and poverty alleviation feeds into these important discussions.
To address these challenges, my home institution, Middlesex University in London, England, has created an MA programme in Human Rights and Business. The course covers areas of law such as international human rights law and the law of the WTO, and explores the relevance of these areas to multinational corporations -- especially those corporations operating in emerging economies. The modules are deliberately human rights law-centred, and go significantly beyond the concept of corporate social responsibility. The programme itself is tailored for busy professionals with significant online content and class contact restricted to two days a month (Friday-Saturday). More information here.

Guest Blogger: Aparna Chandra

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Aparna Chandra (left) as today's guest blogger.
Aparna is a Visiting Professor at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, from which she received B.A. and LL.B. degrees with honors, as well as numerous awards. She holds an LL.M. degree from Yale Law School, where she is currently pursuing her J.S.D. Aparna has also worked at the National Judicial Academy of India, as a Law Associate and a Research Fellow.
Aparna's areas of scholarly interest include international human rights and civil liberties, gender and the law, and judicial process reform. She also teaches international criminal law.
In her guest post below, Aparna discusses her paper, Gender Dimensions of the Death Penalty in India. Her other publications include several articles. The most recent article, co-authored with her colleague Mrinal Satish, discussed the Indian Supreme Court's approach to terror-related adjudication. Aparna also recently co-authored a report on the implementation of the Protection of Civil Rights Act for the Government of India's Centre for the Study of Casteism, Communalism, and the Law.
Heartfelt welcome!

Gender & the death penalty in India

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

The Indian Supreme Court has had to grapple time and again with the constitutionality of the death penalty.

The leading decision on the issue is Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980). Here the Court (below right) recognized that there was scope for arbitrariness in the award of the death penalty due to unguided judicial discretion in determining sentences. To rectify this, the Court established a paradigm for guided discretion, and restricted the award of death penalty to the “rarest of rare” cases, where the convict is beyond reform and the option of life is “unquestionably foreclosed”. This conclusion has to be based on an analysis of aggravating and mitigating circumstances pertaining to each individual case.

However, as I have argued in my paper, Gender Dimensions of the Death Penalty in India, the principles by which the “rarest of rare” determination is governed are applied in a manner that devalues the forms and sites of violence commonly experienced by women, as compared to those that are more familiar to the male worldview. Thus is retained the arbitrariness of the death penalty regime.
The principles by which the “rarest of rare” determination is governed are morally contingent, and operate against a backdrop of social norms that justify and legitimate (and sometimes even mandate) violence against certain segments of the society (including women).

For example, courts are required to examine:

► Whether the crime is one of extreme depravity;

► Whether there is any continuing threat to society from the perpetrator; and

► Whether there is any scope for the reform and rehabilitation of the offender.

Mental and emotional disturbance or feelings of moral justification are significant mitigating circumstances.

As I show in my paper, courts do not consider women’s common experiences of violence to be particularly “depraved,” because there are often underlying social justifications that provide a veneer of legitimacy to the infliction of such violence. Killings for honour, shame, love, and lust fall into this category, as do the killings of nagging wives, resisting rape victims, and disappointing lovers. In these instances, courts regularly find that the crimes are not heinous enough to fall within the rarest of rate category -- and thus that the perpetrator does not constitute a continuing menace to society. His actions are seen as an aberration rather than an indication of a “criminal tendency.” In all these cases, the Court is therefore able to determine that the perpetrators would be able to reform and get rehabilitated. Such men are seen as “unlikely recidivists,” because the blame for the offence is shifted to the woman who provided unusual provocation, and therefore “called the crime upon herself,” a common social justification for the infliction of violence in the first place.

It is unfortunate that social justifications translate into legal devices for the perpetuation of violence.

Courts also privilege crimes committed for power, for property, and in the public sphere, over crimes within the family. The distinction drawn by courts creates a form of public/private divide, with the law privileging violence within the former sphere. This is discriminatory, since the most common form of violence faced by women around the world is within the family and by acquaintances. Women have unequal access to property, power, and public spaces. It is therefore much less likely that women will face violence in these contexts than within the home or in intimate settings.
The implication of these findings is not that the death penalty should extend to all crimes. Rather, it is that arbitrariness in the award of the death penalty will not disappear merely by providing a set of principles for determining the award of the death penalty.

At the same time, even if the death penalty were to be removed (as I believe it should be), it has to be remembered that law and punishment serve expressive ends. Patriarchal law reaffirms society’s entrenched views about women’s role and their worth.

By consistently discounting women’s experiences of violence in determining the norms by which a society is to be governed, law threatens to continue and further legitimate the already entrenched notions of hierarchy, discrimination, and violence in society.

On April 8

On this day in ...
... 1985 (25 years ago today), India sued in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to recover damages from the Union Carbide Corp., owner of the pesticide plant (left) in Bhopal where a gas leak 3 months earlier, "the worst industrial accident in history, killed about 1,700 people and injured as many as 200,000 more." (photo credit) Sought were not only damages to compensate victims and pay for the costs of emergency relief, but also punitive damages in order, the suit said,

'to deter Union Carbide and any other multinational corporation from the willful, malicious and wanton disregard of the rights and safety of the citizens of those countries in which they do business.'

The litigation eventually moved to India, where, in 1989, the Supreme Court of India approved a $470 million settlement.


(Prior April 8 posts are here, here, and here)

Do We Need a Reservation?

On Tuesday, India's upper house of parliament passed the Women's Reservation Bill, which would amend the constitution in order to set aside a 33% quota for women in India's federal and state assemblies. This contentious bill, which was first introduced nearly fifteen years ago, still needs to pass the lower house of parliament and pass through 15 of 28 state assemblies in order to take effect.
Grumbles abound; some fear that these reserved positions will be allocated only to already privileged women, arguing that Muslim, Dalit, and otherwise disadvantaged women should have particular guarantees of representation. Supporters of the bill say that it will work to protect these disadvantaged groups, and in any case, moving beyond the current 11% representation of women in the lower house of parliament seems a great step forward. (In the U.S., women make up 16.8% of the House of Representatives, 17% of the Senate, and 24.4% of state legislatures.) Others express the concern that, added to the 22.5% of parliament that's already reserved for disadvantaged castes and tribes, this would leave 55% of the seats in India's legislature subject to quotas.
Some argue that the reservations simply won't advance women, as powerful men will just get their wives and daughters elected as proxies. This claim is belied by the 33% reservations for women that already exist at the panchayat, or local council level, to which a million women are elected every five years -- the largest participation of women in government in the world (in raw numbers, of course, not percentages; Rwanda, as we've posted, wins the latter prize, with women making up 56.3% of the lower house of parliament and 34.6% of the upper house). The Economist makes a more compelling argument against the bill's effectiveness, noting that it will cover a different tranche of seats in three successive parliamentary terms and will then expire. This fractured application and short lifespan will make it difficult for women and men alike to get re-elected, thereby eliminating incentives to work hard on behalf of their constituencies.
Despite the bill's flaws, we know that women will not get a seat at the table without a reservation. And in India, where women face harms ranging from sex-selective abortion to dowry death, the need for representation is urgent and vital. The maintenance of India's vibrant democracy demands no less. In the words of Sonia Gandhi as she faced down one of the bill's opponents, “Your wife has been chief minister. You have seven daughters. What’s their view on the bill?” 'Nuff said.

Law and Outbound M&A by Indian Multinationals

Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to say a few words about my forthcoming article, Rising Multinationals: Law and the Evolution of Outbound Acquisitions by Indian Companies, in this guest post. I am working on this piece in connection with my participation in the U.C. Davis Law Review’s 2010 Symposium, entitled “The Asian Century?” As many of you know, in the past decade India has become one the fastest growing economies in the world. During this period, not only have Indian companies achieved significant domestic growth, but they also have launched multimillion and multibillion dollar deals to acquire companies around the globe. What often comes as a surprise is that many of the acquisition targets are companies in developed economies, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom. Just last year, Tata Motors, part of the giant Indian conglomerate The Tata Group, bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford in a $2.3 billion deal that received world-wide recognition. This acquisition is one of the many outbound acquisitions completed by the various Tata companies in the past few years (including the acquisition of marquee British brand Tetley Tea). While the mega-deals seen in the 2005-2007 period have certainly slowed down during the economic crisis, Indian companies are continuing to acquire companies in developed countries. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Reliance Industries, one of India’s largest companies, announced its intent to acquire a controlling stake in LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest chemical companies.
Finance and business scholars have begun to explore outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals, emphasizing the business and economic motivations underlying these transactions. However, there has been little analysis of the significant role of India’s legal norms and rules, including recent shifts in the country’s regulatory and legal regimes, in the rapid expansion of Indian multinationals. I believe that law plays a number of important roles in the emergence of Indian multinationals. First, legal reforms launched during the economic liberalization period spearheaded by Manmohan Singh, India’s current Prime Minister and former Finance Minister, set the stage for outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals. Second, legal norms and legal history provide Indian multinationals with competitive advantages that are largely distinct from that of firms from other emerging economies. Third, legal constraints on mergers and acquisition activity by Indian firms impose substantial restrictions not only on the methods used by Indian multinationals in pursuing outbound acquisitions, but also on the future potential of Indian multinationals. An analysis of the role of law and legal norms not only presents a more complete picture of the environment that has both facilitated and constrained outbound acquisitions by Indian multinationals, but also explains in part why Indian multinationals have targeted firms in the west. My article presents this analysis, which I hope other scholars, as well as lawmakers, will find helpful.

The Copenhagen Accord: Deal but No Deal

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

After two years of preparation and two weeks of intense negotiations at the COP 15 in Copenhagen, there is no internationally legally binding deal on climate change. This is not exactly a surprise. Countries, particularly the United States, China and Denmark, were careful to set clear expectations that there would be no such deal in the weeks leading up to the COP. It is, however, disappointing, particularly given the urgency facing those who are already feeling the impacts of global warming.
There is the Copenhagen Accord – a summary of political commitments developed and agreed to in the final hours by the ministerial-level leaders of five nations: Brazil, China, India, South Africa and the United States. The text of the Copenhagen Accord recognizes climate change as “one of the greatest challenges of our time,” and notes the political will to take action immediately to keep the global increase in warming below 2 degrees. It specifies targets and deadlines for Annex I and Non-Annex I countries, and commits developed countries to providing $30 billion in funding over the next two years. It also highlights, albeit in vague language, the need to monitor and verify emission reductions – a sensitive point of negotiation between the United States and China.
The Accord is the result of the efforts of a handful of nations. As high-level ministers arrived last Wednesday and Thursday, they began negotiating in an attempt to reach a deal of some kind. Their efforts were heralded by U.N. Assistant Secretary Robert Orr as “the most genuine negotiation I’ve ever seen between leaders.” Yet in their understandable haste, a select few nations engaged in a process that left most countries out, usurping the traditional negotiation process used by diplomats and civil servants. As a consequence, some of those latter countries sought to block the Copenhagen Accord’s formal acceptance.
But the Copenhagen Accord is an outcome – it is something.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said “finally, we sealed the deal,” while also noting the need to translate the Accord into international law next year. President Obama has called for continued confidence-building before a legally binding deal can be reached. Translation: more meetings. Indeed, although the Copenhagen Accord is deemed “operational immediately,” it will require continued multilateral discussions and cooperation for it to take full effect.
But can we afford to continue COP talks?
The cost alone is staggering. Denmark spent an estimated $350 million on hosting the conference, which allegedly racked up a 41,000-ton carbon footprint. The process is also flawed. It is a time-sink – resulting in a two-year lead-up to a two-week meeting that reached a “deal” in the last two days. Tuvalu’s upset during the first week and the temporary withdrawal by several African nations in the second week were symptomatic of a process in which power triumphs over interests. Simply put, there is a deficit of trust. No country wants to make the first move if it means vulnerability. This is why deals are made in side-negotiations where smaller groups of parties find the assurances they need to “get real.” The lesson of COP 15 – the Accord is the result of such a meeting.
Another lesson worth keeping in mind for next year's climate change summit in Mexico City is this:
Climate change is a global challenge of unprecedented scale, complexity and severity, and as such it demands considering a new kind of process for reaching global solutions. The same old multilateral treaty negotiation process that worked so well in the case of the 1987 Montreal Protocol is not sufficient. Among other things, on the issue of climate change there simply is not enough time.

On November 18

On this day in ...
... 1964 (45 years ago today), a New York Times writer reported the easing of food shortages, which had spurred riots in India's Kerala state, in dark orange at right. The shortages had resulted from the government's decision earlier in the month to ration food supplies -- the 16 million inhabitants of the southwestern Indian state became "'panicky,' because rice, their chief food, had disappeared from the markets." The failure of the rationing system also had provoked black-market trading, followed by "summary trials" for persons suspected of such trading. In a marker of that Cold War era, the Times informed its readers that Kerala was a "Communist stronghold."

(Prior November 18 posts are here and here.)

On November 15

On this day in ...
... 1949 (60 years ago today), sentences of death by hanging were carried out on 2 men convicted of involvement in the assassination India's independence leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi, in 1946, as he walked to a prayer meeting at the New Delhi house where he was living. Executed were a 39-year-old newspaper editor who had been "nearly lynched" after he fatally shot Gandhi, and a 38-year-old man "believed to be the leader of a political group" opposed to a secular Indian state. The executions took place "after the Privy Council in England rejected their appeals."


(Prior November 15 posts are here and here.)

(Don't just) Read On! Women's world

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing we're reading)

Sue Halpern's review of Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression in Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), reads in part:

While working as journalists, the pair took up the fate of girls in China, and once they did so, a Pandora's box of gender-based cruelty and brutality was cracked open, and not just there. Sexual trafficking and slavery in Asia and Eastern Europe, honor killings in India, rape as a tactic of war, and female genital mutilation are now part of the international conversation, in no small part due to their reporting for the Times, and to the editorial platform afforded Kristof by the paper.

And just as Kristof is unabashed in his use of that platform to spread a message, he and WuDunn are very clear that they have not written Half the Sky simply to document the condition of child brides in Ethiopia and girls forced into prostitution in Cambodia, but to inspire readers to change the dynamic and shift the paradigm. "Let us be clear about this up front," they say in their introduction. "We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts." It is a testament to their skills as writers and reporters that they've managed to write this call to action without having to raise their voices. The facts, as they learned long ago in China, speak loudly enough.

And what are some of those facts? A girl in India dies every four minutes because her parents don't believe she's worthy of medical care; a third of all women worldwide are beaten at home; women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined; according to the United Nations, 90 percent of females over the age of three were sexually abused in parts of Liberia during the civil war there; there are, very conservatively, according to the British medical journal The Lancet, ten million child sex slaves.

The "incipient" movement has a name and a webpage, Half the Sky Movement, with a rubric for getting involved.

On November 5

On this day in ...
... 1834 (175 years ago today), a daughter, Anna Harriette, was born into a family of high military rank, the Crawfords, in Wales. Or so she claimed years later in the memoir published under the name she took after marriage -- Anna Leonowens -- and titled The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870). Recent research, however, indicates that Leonowens (right) was born 3 years earlier, in India, to a father who was a lowly sergeant, surnamed not Crawford but Edwards, and to an Anglo-Indian mother. (photo credit) By her deception, it is written, Leonowens

protected not only herself but her children, who would have greater opportunities if their mixed-race heritage remained unknown.

Some facts are not in question: that she married in India in 1849, that in her 30s she was widowed, and that as a result she accepted an offer to become the governess for the "39 wives concubines and 82 children" of Mongkut, King of Siam, in present-day Thailand. Her adventure is perhaps best known through film adaptations such as the 1956 musical The King and I.

(Prior November 5 posts are here and here.)