Is international justice the enemy of peace?
Aryeh Neier; 24/7/08: The writer, president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch, is the author most recently of Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights. (c) Project Syndicate, 2008. www.project-syndicate.org
It is only a little more than 15 years ago that the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. That court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), may soon mete out justice to a new defendant, following the arrest in Belgrade of Radovan Karadzic, wartime leader of Bosnia’s Serbs. Yet, there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: in their effort to do justice, they are obstructing achievement of a more important goal, peace. Such complaints have been expressed most vociferously when sitting heads of state are accused of crimes. The charges filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar Bashir for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur are the latest example. Indeed, the denunciations of the justice process this time are more intense and more vehement than in the past. The complaints were also loud in 1995, when the ICTY’s prosecutor indicted Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, and even louder when they were indicted again later in the same year for the massacre at Srebrenica.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=9536
Tags: Human Rights, ICC