On May 26

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), in Colombia, diplomats from that country plus Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela signed the Cartagena Agreement (formally titled the Andean Subregional Integration Agreement) "in order to jointly improve their peoples’ standard of living through integration and economic and social cooperation." Today the subregional organization established by this and related agreements, la Comunidad Andina/the Andean Community (flag at right), has 4 members: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Chile withdrew in 1976, and Venezuela, which had joined in 1973, withdrew in 2006.
... 2001, the Constitutive Act of the African Union entered into force. The agreement, by which the 53-state-party-member African Union (flag at left) replaced the 38-year-old Organization of African Unity as the primary regional organization for the continent, had been adopted at Lomé, Togo, on July 11, 2000.

(Prior May 26 posts are here and here.)

ICC charge confirmation hearing in Bemba

(This is the 1st in IntLawGrrls' series previewing an ICC hearing set for next week in the sole case so far charged in the Central African Republic referral)

Just before New Year's Day, Pre-Trial Chamber III of the the International Criminal Court announced that the confirmation of charges hearing in the case of Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo will be held Monday to Thursday of next week.

The charges arise from the investigation of the situation in the Central African Republic, which was begun by the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor in January 2005 and on which IntLawGrrls previously posted here. Bemba (above left), an “alleged national” of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was seized pursuant to a May 23, 2008 arrest warrant charging that he was involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity within the territory of the Central African Republic. The latter, conflict-ridden country had referred the situation, for a period from July 1, 2002, onward to the international court in 2005, on the ground that its courts lacked the capacity to prosecute. (photo credit)

Bemba is the first case to arise from this referral. Bemba had formed the Mouvement de Libération du Congo, or MLC, in 1998 as a party to the civil war that raged in the DRC between 1998 and 2003. In 2002, Ange-Félix Patassé, then the President of the Central African Republic (now, in exile in Togo, ever since a 2003 coup), asked for Bemba’s assistance in quashing a rebel movement. While the MLC was active in the Central African Republic -- between October 25, 2003, and March 15, 2003 -- Bemba is alleged by the ICC Prosecutor to have orchestrated the Mouvement's campaign of rape, torture, pillage and outrages upon personal dignity in the localité of PK12 as well as the towns of Bossangoa and Mongoumba.

After losing his bid to become President of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006, Bemba served as senator until January 2007, when he was escorted by U.N. forces to Portugal, ostensibly for “health reasons.” Six months later, the DRC issued an arrest warrant charged him with high treason. On May 24, 2008, Belgian police arrested Bemba outside of Brussel pursuant to the ICC’s arrest warrant. Having been placed in custody, Bemba first appeared before Pre-Trial Chamber III on the U.S. Independence Day, July 4, 2008.

(Next in this 3-part preview series: A roadmap to this week's hearing on confirmation of charges)

On April 27

On this day in ...
... 1960, the West African country of Togo won its independence from a U.N. trusteeship managed by 1 of its former colonizers, France. The day was not marked for nearly 3 decades when President Gnassingbé Eyadéma held sway; he ordered celebration instead on January 13, "the date he took power in 1967." After his death in 2005, his son and successor, President Faure Gnassingbé, returned the independence celebrations to this date.
... 1973 (35 years ago today), Beryl Plumptre was named chair of the new Food Prices Review Board of Canada. She saw her job "not merely to report on why food prices were increasing so rapidly, but to report, not to politicians, but directly to the Canadian public." At the time that Plumptre, a past president of the Consumers' Association of Canada and the Vanier Institute of the Family, launched the food board, Canadians spent 20% of their budget on food. Today it's about 10%. The food board was merged a few years later with Canada's Anti-Inflation Board; Plumptre became vice chair of the latter agency. Born in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in 1908, she died just this month, on April 4, at the age of 99. (credit for circa 2000 portrait of Plumptre, by Jerry Grey)