Prizing human rights

An institution established in memory of a Nuremberg prosecutor is seeking prize nominees.
Institution:
The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, dedicated in 1995 at the University of Connecticut. The Center's namesake is Thomas J. Dodd, who began his career in the U.S. Department of Justice and went on to serve as a senior prosecutor at Nuremberg (right), cross-examining defendants in the Trial of the Major War Criminals and serving too in subsequent Nuremberg proceedings. (photo credit) Dodd, born in 1907, was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Connecticut from 1959 until a few months before his death in 1971; his children include the retiring senior Senator from Connecticut, who published his father's Letters from Nuremberg (2007), as well as a former U.S. Ambassador.
Prize:
The Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, awarded biennially by the University of Connecticut "to an individual or group who has made a significant effort to advance the cause of international justice and global human rights." Previous winners (here and here): 2003, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, then Prime Ministers of Ireland and Britain, respectively; 2005, Louise Arbour (left), then U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and former South African Constitutional Court Justice Richard J. Goldstone, like Arbour a onetime Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; 2007, the Center for Justice & Accountability, of which IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Pamela Merchant serves as Executive Director, and Mental Disability Rights International, last month renamed Disability Rights International; and 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists.
To nominate a worthy individual or group for this monetary prize (no self-nominations accepted), complete and submit the form available here. Deadline is December 31, 2010.

Sexual Violence in the ICTR and ICTY: Successes and Disappointments

I have been thinking a lot recently about the progress made from the perspective of women’s distinctive experience of conflict by the ICTY and the ICTR, both of which are soon to complete their work. Although I am somewhat reluctant to engage in any kind of ‘accounting exercise’, where the ‘achievements’ and ‘disappointments’ are lined up against each other and compared, it strikes me that some kind of summarising exercise would be a good idea.
The good:
► (a) sexual violence was included in the statutes of the tribunals themselves following very concerted efforts by international NGOs, their success being what Janet Halley calls ‘governance feminism’ (see her latest article in the Melbourne Journal of International Law on this here);
► (b) significant numbers of women were involved in the running of the tribunals as chief prosecutor (Louise Arbour; Carla del Ponte), as judges (notably Navi Pillay (above) (photo credit), about whom IntLawGrrl Amy Senier also posts today, and Florence Mumba), and as other staff; and
► (c) sexual violence was recognised as the actus reus of other crimes, most notably we recognised in the ICTR that rape could be the actus reus of genocide (Prosecutor v. Akayesu) and in the ICTY that rape could be the actus reus of torture (Celebici Case).
The not so good:
► (a) female victims continue to suffer extreme distress and post-testimony ostracised and abuse after testifying before the tribunals; this can include being subjected to further sexual violence;
► (b) some decisions by the Office of the Prosecutor have been simply baffling, particularly in relation to whether to include sexual violence charges in indictments. Take, for example, the Akayesu indictment which included sexual violence charges only after the presiding judge (Judge Pillay) and NGOs intervened to ask the OTP to consider amending the indictment.
► (c) For quite some time (especially in the early 2000s) there was a clear prosecutorial policy of sidelining sexual violence charges: specialised investigative units were disbanded, clear cases where sexual violence should have been included in the indictment had no such charges and these decisions continue to have repercussions (the Lukic case is an obvious example -- IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack discusses it here).
A mixed record then, it is fair to say. Of course, there have been enormous advances and these continue to have positive ramifications in other international and hybrid tribunals (not least in the Special Court for Sierra Leone), and to ignore these would be churlish. But we should also be careful not to overstate progress; identifying the ‘must do better’ areas is vital to the continuing development of international criminal law.

On February 14

On this day in...
... 2007, as duly noted by siblings we owe debts of gratitude – among them Legal History Blog, Opinio Juris, Concurring Opinions, and Anupam Chander – IntLawGrrls began a very short online pregnancy.
We'd announced that we were expecting a few days earlier, via this Heartfelt Hello:

Our world is a jumble of peoples, a mix of culture and custom, a marketplace of markets as well as ideas. We come together in amazing ways, yet clash in ways that bring destruction and dismay. Women now have a hand in our world’s affairs: think Albright and Arbour, del Ponte and Higgins, Ginsburg and Rice. Yet our voices remain faint, in backrooms and in the blogosphere. IntLawGrrls – women who teach and work in international law, policy and practice – hope to change all that. We embrace foremothers' names to encourage crisp commentary, delivered at times with a dash of sass. We welcome replies, and we look forward to fresh dialogue on the matters of the day.
It's our world, after all.

In gestation beginning February 14, 2007
Due date March 3, 2007 – Grrls’ Day in Japan

Our "on this day" feature thus enters its 3d year this Valentine's Day; accordingly, from now on we'll note the prior years' posts at the day's end. Those for February 14 are here and here.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)

Critics claim that Ocampo has imperiled peace negotiations -- but those negotiations were not progressing even before the ICC prosecutor named Bashir.

-- our colleague James C. O'Brien, a principal at The Albright Group, and Presidential Envoy for the Balkans during the Clinton Administration, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed comparing and contrasting this month's application for an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (above left) by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo (IntLawGrrls posts above, here, here, and here) with the 1999 indictment of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (above right) by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Prosecutor Louise Arbour.

Exit Arbour, enter Pillay

Just days after the departure of Louise Arbour -- subject of this New York Times profile and this prior IntLawGrrls post -- comes news that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon likely will tap Navanethem Pillay (below right) as the next U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
As we've written, Pillay

'is a product of apartheid South Africa,' having been born in Natal in 1941, 1 of 4 daughters in a family headed by a bus driver. She was the 1st woman of color to start a law firm in her hometown.

Also the 1st black woman to be appointed to the High Court in South Africa, Pillay served as a Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1995 to 2003; the last 4 of those years she was the ICTR's President. Among her achievements at the ad hoc tribunal was to bring attention to gender-based violence. Since 2003, Pillay's been a Judge on the International Criminal Court.

Though she'd be the 1st human rights commissioner from Africa, and the 1st from a southern region outside South America, Pillay would not be the 1st woman human rights commissioner. Others among the 5 persons who've held the position include the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and, of course, Pillay's immediate predecessor, Arbour. (The latter 2 and 3 other international law women were honored in Vanity Fair last fall.)

Inspiring choices, all.

Au revoir (presque) à Louise Arbour

Louise Arbour will step down from her position as U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights on June 30, thus concluding her 1st term in that position without seeking a 2d term.
Arbour (right) made the announcement yesterday, days after opening the current session in Geneva of of the Human Rights Council.
As did a recent predecessor in the position, former Irish President Mary Robinson (below), the Montreal-born Arbour (prior posts here) has called a number of countries on the carpet for pursuing policies that falls short of meeting international human rights obligations. They include China, Zimbabwe, and, the United States. Yesterday's N.Y. Times story wrote of her claim last year that

the so-called U.S. war on terror was eroding the worldwide ban on torture, noting reports of secret U.S. detention centers. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, said it was 'inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers.'

The same story said that Arbour -- who, as we've posted, was the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia responsible for the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic and who also is a former Justice on Canada's Supreme Court -- said that family concerns and not criticism drove her decision:

She acknowledged that she found much of the criticism hurtful, but she said she was not quitting because of it. 'On the contrary, I have to resist the temptation to stay to confront it.'

Here's hoping her successor's another feisty steward of international human rights.

On February 10, ...

... 1947, Louise Arbour (right) was born in Montréal, Canada. A professor at the Osgood Hall Law School, York University in Toronto, Canada, beginning in 1970, she became a judge in 1987, serving 1st at the Supreme Court of Ontario (High Court of Justice) and then at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. In 1996, the U.N. Security Council appointed her Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda; she resigned 3 years later to join Canada's Supreme Court. Since 2004 she has been U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Arbour made news Friday when she stated that "[t]he controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture." Referring to the international arrest warrant issued in 1998 against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Arbour added that "[v]iolators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations:

'There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress.'

... 1952, the Congress Party won victory in India's 1st general election, a result that made its leader, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister.