From the moment in 1999 when Kosovo with its mass burials and brutal imagery shocked the world – especially Europe, which had not had a war on its soil since the defeat of Hitler – the term ‘War Crimes’ has come back into the lexicon with a vengeance.
Until then, the words brought to mind the Japanese in Manchuria and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but hardly anything closer in time.
Conflict in the Balkans brought with it a whole new dimension of war. Ugly new phrases like ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ appeared. Albanian Kosovar civilians, especially women, became instruments of war strategy, not just so-called collateral damage.
Western states, especially Blair’s Britain, felt obliged to intervene and did so, using legalistic sleight-of-hand, with echoes of the Just War. Those of us vehemently in favour of intervention had to ignore the fact Kosovo was in Constitutional terms a province of Serbia like Hampshire is a County of the UK. Blair and NATO got away with it largely because history is written by the victors.
In February 2002, the former Serbian leader Milosevic appeared at the Hague. Proving that as head of state Milosevic was responsible for crimes committed was never going to be easy but in the event rendered unnecessary by his death in his cell.
With the advent of a new Age of Conflict the term War Crimes became bandied about by journalists and politicians more and more loosely. Aceh/Indonesia. Timor Leste. Sierra Leone. Iraq. Afghanistan. The DRC. Darfur. Uganda.
In response, two years ago an entity called Solon based at Plymouth University organised their first War Crimes conference at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, London University. Among the speakers was the well-known QC Philippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director of the UCL Centre on International Courts and Tribunals.
In March 2011 the second War Crimes conference takes place, again at the IALS. The Conference will grapple with the prickliest elements of War Crimes trials – jurisdiction, nature of evidence, memory in war crimes, witness perspectives and the International Criminal Court itself.
Among the speakers is a name well-known to Liberal-Democrats, Lesley Abdela, now an internationally-recognised Gender/Post-Conflict specialist. She addresses whether UN Security Council resolutions 1325, 1820 and 1888 are sufficient instruments to counter the horse-trading of justice where negotiators swap impunity against crimes committed by each side against women and girls in conflict zones like Nepal, Aceh, Timor Leste, or Darfur, Liberia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Uganda.
In all these conflicts atrocities were committed. In the DRC they continue to be committed. The UN Security Council more in hope than expectation continues to churn out resolutions. But something new has entered the equation: almost brazenly, the ever-lengthening arm of the International Criminal Court has reached into Khartoum, indicting the Sudanese President.
In doing so, the ICC has caused outrage among many Africans who call it ‘European’ rather than ‘African’ justice’. At the Solon conference in March the talk on this by Cissa Wa Numbe of the DRC UNA could prove especially interesting.
War Crimes Conference Justice? – Whose Justice?
3-5 March 2011, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies London
Conference enquiries [email protected] or [email protected]
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Knaptoft: The very heart of England
We do have a two-tier policing system but it is not what our homegrown racists think it is.
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Tom Arms
Ruth Bright
Tom Bailey
Alex Macfie
7 Comments
I remember John Alderdice once saying that there should be no such thing as Catholic Rights and Protestant Rights, only human rights. Same goes for Justice, and I hope any Africans who are tempted to dismiss ‘European justice’, while getting a fair hearing for their concerns, have this point made to them as firmly as possible.
Tim Symonds, and Terry, who comments above, talk of “Africans” as if the citizens of 57 countries are likely to hold one opinion. They also make the classic mistake of thinking African leaders speak for anyone but themselves. Listen to phone in shows on different African radio programmes, and you will hear many African citizens, unconnected to their governing classes, expressing outrage that their rulers cosy up to the likes of Sudan’s Bashir. Many of the continent’s rulers withhold judgement on their fellow dictators because they don’t want the spotlight to be turned on them and their own human rights records. When I was in Darfur, and since then in our work with brave Sudanese, I hear people express bewilderment that western nations, so generous with words about liberty and freedom, have cynically abandoned them. Ask any Rwandan survivor – there is no peace or reconciliation without justice.
So what the hell were the wars in the Former Yugoslavia then between 1991-1995? Storms in a teacup or wars?
I think Slovenes (less affected), Croats, Bosniaks and even Serbs would agree if nothing else that they had been in wars? And most of the world would agree. The start of this article is a very peculiar rewrite of history. British people will also recall some of the shocking imagery of Bosnian muslim men from the camps in Bosanska Krajina with their emaciated frames. The term ethnic cleansing was already well and truly in the lexicon by the time Kosovo happened.
There is much that is good in this article but you’ve ruined the effect by airbrushing a very significant part of history out. I expect better from academics. You will also have offended a significant number of members of the British armed forced who served as either UN or NATO peacekeepers (and some of whom tragically lost their lives in various accidents and by being shot by Serbs or have PTSD from what they saw and experienced).
OUCH! Re. Toby Philpott’s comments: yes, Toby, you are right – as the author of the Solon War Crimes conference synopsis I certainly did not mean to leave out or diminish the terrible natureof the Balkan conflicts in the earlier 1990s – indeed my partner Lesley Abdela was in the Bihac enclave as a war reporter when a hero of the defenders was shot next to her on the front line by a sniper and died after some hours in agony, with no hospital within reach. I myself was born in time for Hitler’s war and I spent 2 years in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, so I am aware of the terrible Age of Conflicts we are in. What has come from these conflicts is a sense that humans, far from becoming more willing to turn to peaceful solutions to difficult problems, are getting out of control (viz my references to ‘ethnic cleansing’ and rape as a weapon of war) and the world community has had enough of it. My personal attention is becoming more and more drawn to ways to stop impunity in its tracks. I was in Nepal very recently and the two sides in the long-drawn-out negotiations – the GoN and the Maoists – are doing their absolute best under the blanket to offer each other impunity for crimes against humanity even while a very heavy concentration of UN Agencies is in Kathmandu observing matters closely.
As to the term ‘African’, indeed this is as accurate (or not) as the term ‘European’ and I do accept I as an Englishman am rather different in outlook and even temperament than, say, an Italian. However, there is something all Africans, whether francophone, anglophone or speaking other former Colonial languages have in common which is that colonial past. There is a widespread and visceral reaction to any reminder of that Colonial period and perhaps the ICC reminds them of those not-so-far-off days. Certainly I have spoken to senior African civil servants and politicians and they worry about the indictment of the Sudanese President by the ICC even though the view is equally widespread that he attempted by all possible means to cow the Darfur region and maintain control over the oil and should be held to account, though preferably by an African court.
Finally, Becky Tinsley’s remark that the world does abandon entire peoples rather than go through the pains-taking and costly process of seeing justice done. We have all noted how the international community loses interest almost to the day the world’s press/Media lose interest and pack their bags. When this happens it is at a terrible cost, because there is certainly no long-lasting peace without justice. Nearly 50% of all today’s conflicts break out again within ten years. I personally wonder whether all these people at the top table in peace-negotiations have any idea at all how to achieve a lasting settlement – and the absence of women from the top tables, viz Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Kosovo etc. is a disgrace and an affront to UN Security Council resolutions which have come thick and fast since UNSCR1325 in 2000 which, to quote Hamlet (was it?), are more honoured in the breach than the resolution. But as I imagine Becky hopes, the Solon conference at the IALS next March will surely have the idea of Justice at its epicentre.
All the best
Tim Symonds
Its Interesting that whenever anyone talks about ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘War Crimes’ no on ever mentions the ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the Israeli’s of Palestine, which has been going on since 1947, accompanied by many ‘war crimes’.
Why is this never mentioned publicly.
Becky you’ve contradicted yourself. If Africans are phoning in to criticize their own leaders then they’re not dictatorships they’re living in. In real dictatorships like China anyone criticizing the regime would quickly be picked up by the secret police.
Interesting you mention the neo conservatives favourite bete noire Sudan but fail to mention western backed tyrannies of Rwanda(did you see the recent joke elections?),Uganda (the no party party system) and Ethiopia etc. You can bet anything that western backed tyrannies will never be held to account for human rights violations. Any comment on Sri Lanka?
The trial of Ratko Mladic is reaching a conclusion in a few days from now, but there are very few such trials. Robert Mugabe is negotiating his future. The leader of North Korea is reportedly considering his future in comparison with Saddam Hussein, who was tried under Iraqi law in Iraq and sentenced to death. Idi Amin was taken in by Saudi Arabia. Baby Doc Duvalier was allowed to leave Haiti (with about 350 million US dollars?) and travel the world in international waters on his yacht. There have been multiple vetoes at the security council of the UN. Every situation is unique, but there are many similarities.