Crimes against humanity and international law: Justice without borders?

Who could be against international law? Surely the establishment of institutions of international justice like the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the ad-hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda are representative of a new and more progressive era of international politics in which tyrants and dictators can no longer oppress and murder their people behind the barrier of state sovereignty? Organisations such as Amnesty International have argued that during the 1990s a new era of accountability has come into being, bringing the end of impunity, and peace and justice for all wherever they live.

Currently the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by ICC on counts of crimes against humanity and of war crimes. Other commentators have argued that Israeli leaders should be indicted for the bombardment of Gaza. Crusading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson has even called for the pope to be arrested and tried by the ICC for crimes against humanity.

However, the case for international law is far from being cut and dried. Scratch the surface and one will find that far from bringing in a new era of peace and accountability, so-called international justice serves to prolong conflict and disempowering people in weak states.

For example, the indictment of President Bashir has served to acerbate the conflict in Darfur, removing any onus upon anti-government forces to negotiate. Ultimately peace must be a political process of agreement and negotiation rather than a judicial one. International judicial intervention has prolonged the conflict in Darfur and increased the number of dead.

However, there are more problems with international justice – it is simply a fiction. The international judicial institutions established after the Cold War are institutions established by the West, for the West. When the ICC was being set up several years ago, the late Robin Cook (then UK foreign secretary) assured the nervous British and American establishments that ‘this is not a court set up to bring to book prime ministers of the United Kingdom or presidents of the United States’. Cook was being absolutely truthful – only African conflicts and African leaders are being tried and investigated at the ICC.

But this is not to argue for a more ‘equal opportunities’ international justice. When cheerleaders for international justice talk of a new era of accountability and the end of impunity, what exactly do they mean? In theory, domestic law is derived from the will of the citizens. In reality citizens of a state can vote against a government that has introduced laws that they do not like and change their government and the law of the land. Even in authoritarian states, governments can be held accountable by their citizens, as growing protests in China from both working and middle classes demonstrate. However, the people of Darfur (for example) can in no way hold the governments of the powerful states that have set up the ICC to account.

Whatever one might feel about the injustices of the world, no one should be under any illusion that international law can bring either peace or justice to anyone.

Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.

Dr Tara McCormack is a lecturer in international politics, University of Leicester; author, Critique, Security and Power: the political limits to emancipatory approaches. The debate Crimes against humanity and international law: justice without borders? Is taking place at the Battle of Ideas festival on Sunday 31 October.

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• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PPLXHHY55QW77X5OMHBWM2PZXU Bill

  …and one of the reasons I choose to live in the US, rather than Britain, is that it has a Constitution that guarantees rights to its citizens. The US will not recognize the ICC, because the US does not recognize other courts as having authority over its citizens. Full stop. Get over yourself.
  How did you vote on the EU constitution? Oh… you didn’t…

• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/BO3IAC5YFEB5TFQMM43HTGWK4Y Concerned

  We’ve already got it in the UK. Thanks to Labour, any EU country can make an arrest warrant for any UK citizen without a shred of evidence. Add to that Blair’s craven cowardice regarding reciprocal UK/USA extradition requests, and you will, I hope, understand what I mean.

• stonedwolf

  The ICC is clearly designed to imprison the war-criminals of African and Balkan states.It is against its unwritten charter to prosecute Anglo-Saxons no matter what their crime, blacks and Slavs have no such protection.

• C M Concepcion

  That’s because The Shrub removed the signature Clinton placed on it, making it easier for the neocon cabal to wage its illegal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. And there’s more to come with Iran.

• http://www.facebook.com/harrison.stimson Harrison Stimson

  Parliament is sovereign as is demonstrated through our UNWRITTEN constitution. We allowed ourself to give up some power as is demonstrated by the courts willingness to disapply national law in favour of the EU (see Factortame). However, Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty is in no way a constitutional treaty, EU is not a super state, it has no central government or criminal law for example. we allowed ourselves to give up some power to certain ‘eu’ competences, a small price to pay for human rights of which the states seem to be lacking.

  in conclusion, i’d rather have a flexible constitution which allows for adaption for the way society adapts. Otherwise we might all be running the streets shooting each other. oh wait, thats the US.

  Boom xx

• http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PPLXHHY55QW77X5OMHBWM2PZXU Bill

  The US would not ever give away basic citizens’ rights to some arbitrary foreign power the way the UK has.

  “We allowed ourself to give up some power as is demonstrated by the courts willingness to disapply national law in favour of the EU.” Yes – people who study EU politics refer to this as a key problem in the “democratic deficit.” The UK – without reference to the people – passed power to unelected pukes in Brussels.

  “However, Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty is in no way a constitutional treaty…” Well, one of its authors – Giscard D’Estaing – said: “The proposed institutional reforms, the only ones which mattered to the drafting convention, are all to be found in the Treaty of Lisbon. They have merely been ordered differently and split up between previous treaties.” With respect, his grasp carries more weight.

  If you consider it wise to hand over concern for your human rights to remote, unelected officials in another country – well, that’s your perogative. However, most of us prefer to be asked if that is what we want.

  The reason I loathe Brown with a passion is that he inflicted this on the UK, after lies about a referendum (not to mention all his other vandalism).

  To sign up to the ICC would not be anywhere near as dangerous to UK – or US – freedoms, but is a worrying step in that direction.

• C M Concepcion

  Unfortunately, the US Constitution has all but been eviscerated since the passing of the Patriot Act and the creations of the Department of Homeland Security, all don in the wake of 9/11. It has also given both Bush and Obama carte blanche to violate even international treaties it has signed, including the Geneva Convention, thereby violating rights both home and abroad. As an American living in the UK, while there is no written constitution per se, the UK has a charter of rights similar to the Bill of Rights that are supposed to enshrine much of the same freedoms. Again, however, these have also been ignored, as we see detentions and deportations increase, immigrations restrictions placed that could make the country’s economy unsustainable and the creation of databases that would gather personal and financial information, and have made dissent all but a crime, and this has occurred on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact I’m all but certain they monitor these sites to check for any form of dissenting information to use against us later. I may be paranoid at this point, but that doesn’t mean they’re NOT doing it.