If not in Darfur, then where?
US hostility to the international criminal court knows no bounds
By Robin Cook, The Guardian
Feb 11, 2005 — A commitment to an international criminal court was one of the changes for the better in foreign policy as a result of Labour’s victory. Under the Conservatives, Britain had been a backmarker in negotiations to set up such a court. After the change of regime, Britain was propelled into the front rank of countries supporting an international system to bring to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity.
We mobilised support from other nations, and provided financial help for smaller, poorer states to send a delegation to the Rome conference at which the final package was put to the vote. It was approved with the support of 120 nations and the opposition of only half a dozen. That is as close as you get to consensus in the international community, even if the US was on the losing side.
The international criminal court ends the impunity of dictators who could kill thousands but not be held to account because they controlled their domestic courts. At the time I welcomed its creation as putting the Pol Pots of the future on notice that they would be brought to justice for crimes against their own citizens.
The gravest, most grotesque crimes against humanity since the international criminal court was set up are to be found in Darfur. The UN commission of inquiry has provided a compelling account of the harrowing brutality with which Sudanese forces are pursuing a strategy of ethnic cleansing, and concluded that the victims are “living a nightmare of violence and abuse”. That nightmare has included men being dragged over the ground behind camels by a noose around their necks, women being kept naked in rape camps and girls as young as eight being violated.
The recommendations of the UN commission, though, have caused greater consternation in Washington than in Sudan. This is because its sensible conclusion is that the breaches of humanitarian law in Darfur should be referred to the institution specifically set up for such cases – the international criminal court.
For the past four years, the Bush administration has pursued a relentless pogrom against the court. Hostility to it has come to occupy a totemic role in its belief that US freedom of action must never be constrained by international jurisdiction. As a state department official expressed to a visiting European: “No US citizen is going to be tried by a Belgian”, which raises doubts as to whether the Bush administration actually knows in which European country The Hague is located.
Now Condoleezza Rice has been using her contacts in Europe to lobby privately for the Darfur atrocities to be referred anywhere but the international criminal court. Apparently she has suggested that Darfur could be brought under the remit of the existing UN tribunal for the genocide in Rwanda. This is desperation. The only common feature between Darfur and Rwanda is that they are both in Africa. It is also irresponsible. The Rwanda tribunal is still struggling under an impossible workload and is in no position to provide an expeditious remedy to Darfur’s continuing violence.
Alternatively, she has mooted that the UN could set up an entirely new tribunal, especially for Darfur. But it would take at least a year before any tribunal starting from scratch would have the staff, premises and procedures to get down to work. In the meantime, while the UN tried to accommodate the ideological antipathy of the Bush administration to the international criminal court, another 100,000 people would have been killed in Darfur. One of the six reasons cited by the UN commission for recommending the international criminal court was precisely that it could be activated immediately, without any delay.
Now ministers tell us they are looking for a way forward, but that will only be possible through agreement in the security council – in other words, with the US. But do they really believe that the Bush administration would have the gall to cast a US veto to block Darfur being committed to the international criminal court? Where would that leave all the warm mood music on freedom and justice with which George Bush punctuated his inaugural speech only last month? Come to that, where would it leave the impassioned pleas of Tony Blair for the world to address the plight of Africa as a scar on our conscience?
A US veto would be as embarrassing to Blair as it would be shaming to Bush. But just as embarrassing would be for Britain once again to be seen doing the rounds and trying to persuade the rest of the world to accept the Bush position and not to push the issue to a vote. The only way out with dignity is for Blair to call in some of the many debts that Bush owes him. This is the time when a candid friend should tell Bush to put the urgent need of the people of Darfur for justice before his own dogmatic hostility to the international criminal court.