On April 10

On this day in ...
... 1981 (30 years ago today), an inmate on hunger strike in a Belfast prison was elected to the British Parliament. Fifty-two percent of the electorate in the region of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Northern Ireland, voted for Bobby Sands, who ran as a candidate of the "Anti-H Block" campaign, a term that referred to the section of the Maze prison in "reserved for republicans and loyalists convicted of terrorist offences." (credit for photo of campaigners putting up pro-Sands poster) As stated by the BBC:

In spite of attempts by the European Commission on Human Rights to mediate, Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981.
He was the first of 10 republican prisoners to die after hunger strikes.
They attracted international media attention and sympathy for the republicans.
The hunger strikes came to an end in October 1981.
However, the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher granted the republicans only a few minor concessions.

(Prior April 10 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Kampala as cause to celebrate

(Part 3 of a 3-part series)

Celebration proved the closing theme of the 4th International Humanitarian Law Dialogs.
The final speaker at the recent upstate New York conference was William A. Schabas, Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland-Galway. He asked whether the International Criminal Court Review Conference this summer in Kampala, Uganda (above left; credit), was "a moment of celebration or a disappointment." Schabas then answered his own question:

I think it is a great accomplishment.

The 1998 Rome diplomatic conference, Schabas recalled, had ended with a compromise on the extent of crimes the ICC may hear. Immediately operative were 3 core international offenses: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Left for another day was a 4th: the offense of offensive warmaking, called crimes against peace in the Nuremberg era and known today as the crime of aggression. Article 5 of the Rome Statute grants the ICC jurisdiction over aggression, but postpones actual prosecution until adoption of a provision "defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to this crime."
Negotiators worked on both definition and conditions for the next dozen years before the Assembly of States Parties adopted a package of proposed amendments, designed to give the ICC power to adjudicate allegations of aggression, at Kampala.
"At Kampala, it was not obvious even till the final minutes of the conference that it was going to succeed," said Schabas. "These were adopted in the final minutes of the conference, by consensus. If somebody had called for a vote, the votes probably weren’t there." (credit for photo from Schabas' Kampala blog, depicting him, center, "discussing the amendments to article 8 with the Bulgarian delegation")
The central achievement was the definition of aggression in proposed Article 8 bis. "It will not be immune to judicial interpretation," Schabas said, and predicted "a liberal approach to its application."
Strong supporters of criminal punishment for aggression have expressed concerns that the Kampala package affords too many ways to avoid implication in that crime. (For details on the intricacies of these amendments, see our crime of aggression series.)
Agression, Schabas allowed, "may never be prosecuted, which may not necessarily be a bad thing. It simply confirms a deterrent effect."
Schabas sought to allay concerns about obstacles to entry into force, including a requirement of ratification by 30 states and further review in 2017. "I don’t think they’re actually going to be very difficult – not anywhere near as difficult as the obstacles appeared in 1998, of getting the 60 ratifications." (This latter milepost was reached in April 2002, so that the Rome Statute entered into force fewer than 4 years after its adoption. Today 113 of the United Nations’ 192 member states belong to the ICC. Nonparties include China, India, Russia, Turkey, and, as discussed in yesterday’s post, the United States.)

Nor, in Schabas' opinion, does it seem likely that political leaders of states parties will exercise the possibility of opting out of exposure to ICC pursuit should they be accused of aggression.
Endorsing a prediction that, as posted, ICC Judge Hans-Peter Kaul made earlier in the Dialogs, Schabas said:

I think that within 6 years, 4 months, and a few days we will have a court with jurisdiction over aggression, capable of prosecuting the crime.

This is an important step for international criminal justice, Schabas maintained, along a trail blazed by Robert H. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Trial of the Major War Criminals held in Nuremberg after the Allies defeated Nazi Germany:

Jackson saw the link between war and other crimes, that war is at the center of it, that war is responsible for it. To the extent that the adoption of that amendment revives this, that is good.

On the trail that Jackson blazed lies the question of state responsibility. According to Schabas, it’s a question that was entertained in the proposal of U.S. President George H.W. Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, to set up a tribunal competent to hear charges of aggression. But that proposal never was implemented, and the question of state responsibility was not addressed by the international criminal fora that were set up after Cold War.
Why might some be less eager today to prosecutor perpetrators of aggression?

Schabas proffered 2 possible answers:
► 1st: "We have become a be more militarized than we should be." As posted yesterday, in an earlier Dialogs speech Stephen J. Rapp, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, had stressed, as a reason for caution in implementing the current Kampala aggression amendments as they now stand, that military intervention is at times necessary. Schabas replied:

Sometimes, yes. But nor would I exaggerate the importance of that, because war brings atrocities, inevitably.

►2d: Some civil society organizations seemed not to appreciate the significance of making aggression a crime punishable by the ICC. Schabas recalled: "I saw a banner that said, ‘Civil Society Welcomes Stocktaking,’" another aspect of the Kampala Conference. "Civil society should have welcomed the amendment on aggression."

Echoing Judge Kaul’s description of atrocities as the "excrement" of war, Schabas said of the crime-of-aggression package: "That’s the big piece. It shows that," despite some growing pains at the ICC, "we have a court that is healthy and productive and moving forward."
　
(Part 1 of this 3-part series on the 4th IHL Dialogs is here; Part 2 is here.)

On December 19

On this day in ...
... 1984 (25 years ago today), in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang signed the Joint Sino-British Declaration, which provided that Hong Kong would be returned to China in 1997, thus "end[ing] 155 years of British rule in the colony" and "launch[ing] a new era in trade and diplomacy between the two countries." The transfer did go forward as planned, although in wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre England "gran[ted] British passports to 50,000 Hong Kong heads of families, buil[t] a new international airport, and introduc[ed] a Bill of Rights."

(Prior December 19 posts are here and here.)

On November 28

On this day in ...
... 1990, the BBC reported:

The woman dubbed as the Iron Lady during her premiership made her last tearful speech as the leader of the country from the doorstep of Number 10.

She was, of course, Margaret Thatcher, shown here with her political ally from across the pond, U.S. President Ronald Reagan. (photo credit) A Tory who ruled for nearly a dozen years, Thatcher's the 1st and only woman to have been the Prime Minister of Britain.

(Prior November 28 posts are here and here.)

On June 30

On this day in ...
… 1984 (25 years ago today), Lillian Hellman (right) died in Tisbury, Massachusetts. The playwright's best-known works include The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1941), and Toys in the Attic (1959). Throughout her career, Hellman openly held left-wing political views and was active in the campaign against the growth of fascism in Europe. As a result, she was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Pressured to reveal the names of associates in the theater who might have Communist associations, she refused:

'To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.'

(credit for photo of paperback reissue of Hellman's 1969 memoir, An Unfinished Woman)
… 1992, Margaret Thatcher (below left) joined the House of Lords following the bestowal upon her of a life peerage. In 1959, Thatcher had been elected a Member of Parliament. She proceeded to become Britain's Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and a member of the House of Commons from 1990 to 1992. (photo credit) Thatcher used her appointment to the House of Lords to continue to make her views heard, particularly on European issues. In 1992, Thatcher called for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo as a means to end ethnic cleansing and to preserve the Bosnian state. She has also made a series of speeches criticizing the Maastricht Treaty.

(Prior June 30 posts are here and here.)

On November 30, ...

... 1982 (25 years ago today), animal rights activism took a violent turn as a letter sent by the "Animal Rights Militia" exploded when it was opened at No. 10 Downing Street, London, by a member of the staff of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The staffer suffered minor burns. Thatcher, who suffered no physical injury, commented: Letter bombs anywhere are most distressing and I'm afraid we are all vulnerable."
... 1957 (50 years ago today), Margaret Spellings (right) was born in Michigan, where she lived until age 3, when she and her family moved to Houston, Texas. A political science graduate of the University of Houston, she worked for 6 years as an educational aide to then-Governor George W. Bush. Moving to Washington after his election as President, "she helped create the No Child Left Behind Act and crafted policies on education, immigration, health care, labor, transportation, justice, housing, and other elements of the President's domestic agenda," before becoming Secretary of Education in 2005. Spellings is the 2d woman to lead the Department; the 1st was Shirley Hufstedtler (left), who resigned a federal appellate judgeship to become the 1st person to hold the Cabinet-level post, from 1979-1981.
... 1946, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) was born in Salinas, California.

Does sex matter?

'Way back on February 12 Chris Brummer asked at blackprof.com (our newest "connections" link) "Is there such a thing as an 'African-American' foreign policy position?" News this week prompts a question in the same vein:
Is there such a thing as a 'woman's' policy position?
Arguments in the affirmative are well known. There's Carole Gilligan's A Different Voice, as well as the widespread though less erudite sense that women are better listeners, more caring, more nurturing. The notion seems consistent with the "Refugee Roulette" findings that, as Lakshmi Bai wrote, women immigration judges granted asylum 44% more often than men. And yet a look at individual women who've led their countries reveals many counterexamples -- "Iron Ladies" like Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, who, for good or ill, pursued policies as tough as those of any tough man.
Swanee Hunt (right) has answer to this enigma. A former U.S. ambassador to Austria now at the Kennedy School, Hunt urges readers of the May/June Foreign Affairs to "Let Women Rule." Though contending that women do govern differently, her essay acknowledges the "'masculinity'" of some past women leaders. What's needed to "change norms," Hunt argues, is a cohort, a "critical mass of female leaders" -- "approximately 30 percent of officeholders have to be female to for a significant effect to be felt on policy."
Surely there's comfort in numbers. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg admits to being "'lonely'" since Sandra Day O'Connor retired last year, and Ginsburg's oral dissents in cases that've cut back on women's rights underscore the new singularity of her voice.
But will reaching 30% make policy different? What do you think?