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while, after the horrors of the 1990s in Europe and Africa, there was hope that ending impunity for the
worst offenders might curb the worst excesses in conflicts. Yet here the prospects seem again to be
turning bleak.
Take the issue of rape and other sexual violence in wartime. Although implicitly covered by earlier
prohibitions on inhumane treatment, the 1977 Geneva protocols explicitly outlawed rape as a weapon of
war. Building on all this, the international tribunal for Rwanda, set up to bring the perpetrators of genocide
to justice, was the first to prosecute wide-scale sexual violence as attempted genocide. A UN-backed
tribunal for former Yugoslavia took harrowing testimony from Bosnia’s many victims and convicted some
of their tormentors. The court for Sierra Leone extended the arm of law to cover forced marriage, a
feature of other conflicts too, whereby young women are given as “wives” to rebel fighters. Likewise the
International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent war-crimes court, established at The Hague
in 2002, included sexual violence in its early indictments.
Yet the prospect of being held to account has so far proved less of a deterrent than was hoped. If
anything the use of rape as a weapon of war is on the increase.
Although Islam condemns rape, it has been used by Arab janjaweed
militias against black fellow Muslims in Sudan’s Darfur region on a scale
that has been likened to genocide. The UN secretary-general, Ban Kimoon,
recently said he was “haunted” by the scale and depravity of
sexual violence in places like Congo, committed by both rebel and
government forces. Some 16,000 new cases of sexual violence, 65% of
them involving children, were registered in Congo in 2008, said Susan
Rice, America’s UN ambassador, quoting figures from the UN Population
Fund in a recent Security Council debate. Experience in the field
suggests that, as a rule of thumb in these conflict zones, the number of
actual cases is probably ten to 20 times greater than the number
reported.
AP
In a report to the council this month, Mr Ban’s list of conflicts where
rape has been widespread ran from Chad and the Central African
Republic to Afghanistan under the Taliban, Myanmar and Nepal. But it is
not just the numbers that are depressing.
Some of the countries that signed up to the ICC appear to be
Bosnia, where treaties didn’t help
experiencing buyers’ remorse. The African Union (AU) was the first
regional organisation to talk of moving from non-interference (the claim that governments can do what
they like within their own borders) to non-indifference to such crimes. African governments make up
about a third of those that have ratified the ICC’s Rome statutes, which oblige them to help the court
track down those it has charged. Yet a recent AU summit voted to end co-operation with the court over its
indictment of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur (a
charge of genocide was dropped until ICC pre-trial judges can be sure the evidence warrants it).
The AU vote has been deplored by a number of African governments and by a long list of African humanrights
groups. Critics of the court argue it is biased: all four cases it has taken on so far are from Africa.
But of the four, three were referred by the governments themselves (Uganda, Chad and the Central
African Republic), and the fourth, Sudan, was referred by the Security Council.
The backlash against the court is unlikely to help the battle to end impunity. Nor will the antics of the 47-
member UN Human Rights Council (an inter-governmental body also based in Geneva that is nonetheless
separate from the office headed by the UN’s commissioner for human rights). Earlier this year a majority
on the council gave Sri Lanka a pat on the back despite appalling loss of life among civilians caught up in
the defeat of the Tamil Tigers. Not long before, it had lambasted Israel for its war in Gaza, mandating a
fact-finding commission to look into what it said were Israel’s “war crimes”, while saying nothing at all
about the actions of Hamas. The mission, led by Richard Goldstone, a prominent international lawyer, who
reportedly sees his mandate in a less one-sided fashion, is due to report in September.
Meanwhile asking the ICC to take on other international crimes, such as terrorism and piracy, looks a nonstarter.
There is no agreed definition of terrorism beyond the “we know it when we see it” rule that lets
one man’s terrorist off the hook as another’s freedom-fighter. In any case, the ICC has yet to pin down
the fourth crime mentioned in its statute alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide:
the crime of “aggression”.
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