International Law

  A Filipino gay individual waves a rainbow flag as fellow gays and lesbians hold placards while marching on mainstreet in Manila (Romeo Ranoco/Courtesy Reuters)   In mid-December, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a little noticed report (PDF) discussing the issue of discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Requested by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in June 2011 when the council passed the first ever UN resolution supporting gay rights, the OHCHR report symbolizes a critical milestone regarding the protection of fundamental lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) human rights globally. In particular, the report notes concern over different types of discrimination and violence targeting LGBT people including “killings, rape and physical attacks, torture, arbitrary detention, the denial of rights to assembly, expression and information, and discrimination in employment, health and education.” The report also mentions the issue of “forced marriages,” where certain members of the LGBT community are forced to endure outrageous attempts to change their sexual orientation. The report also takes special care to highlight the international legal basis for protecting rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This includes references to blanket nondiscrimination clauses within the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—all accords that enjoy nearly universal support within the international community. Furthermore, the report dovetails incredibly bold words delivered by Secretary of State Clinton on the same topic this month in Geneva, Switzerland. Declaring, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” Clinton asked that countries merely accept the right for LGBT individuals to exist and that they be afforded a dignified space in society. During her speech, she also announced the establishment of an innovative Global Equality Fund, including $3 million in seed money, to help civil society organizations promote LGBT nondiscrimination as well as a new policy linking U.S. foreign aid to countries’ LGBT rights records. Nevertheless, the OHCHR report concludes, “Governments and intergovernmental bodies have often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” Worse, being gay remains illegal in seventy-six countries, including some nations on the UN Human Rights Council. In five states, gays also face capital punishment. Understanding the plight that millions of LGBT people, as well as those individuals perceived to fall within that category, face on a daily basis UN member states should take care to implement the recommendations of the OHCHR’s report.  Among many important steps, these include investigating killings and violence against gays and lesbians, passing national antidiscrimination legislation, and implementing sensitivity and training programs for public sector actors liked police, prison officials, and border guards. But more can be done. Overall, human rights in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity should be advanced through three mutually-reinforcing channels:                   First, within the UN system, the UNHRC should prioritize drafting and ultimately passing a follow-up resolution to its groundbreaking document in support of LGBT rights passed in June 2011. Other than taking the recommendations of the OHCHR into account, the next resolution should regularize the practice of investigating states’ LGBT rights records; condemn brutality and killings related to sexual orientation; and explicitly call for an end to state-sponsored discrimination, which prevents LGBT people from playing constructive roles in civil society. To reemphasize, the United Nations will not be asking member states to legalize same-sex marriage nor will it be constructing a hypothetical Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Sexual Minorities anytime soon.  Instead, the United Nations can be used as forum to exchange best practices regarding antidiscrimination and awareness programs orientated towards ending violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The OHCHR report, for instance, mentions numerous successful awareness initiatives such as Brazil’s “Brazil without Homophobia” campaign, Australia’s Safe Schools Coalition program, and the four thousand gay-straight alliance groups currently operating in the United States. Second, regional organizations should expand their efforts to promote basic LGBT rights and counterbalance national level legislation or executive action which—either implicitly or explicitly—presents an existential threat to the livelihood of the LGBT community. A colleague at the Council on Foreign relations, John Campbell, recently noted that the African continent has witnessed a startling wave of homophobia, as numerous countries have proposed or passed legislation that either encourages discrimination against the LGBT community or imposes harsh penalties on gay people just for being gay.  Regional organizations, like the African Union, may be in a unique position to pressure governments to better challenge social or cultural norms commonly hijacked to support extreme forms of intolerance. Regional organizations can also act proactively by appointing special LGBT rights rapporteurs or granting observer status to pro-LGBT nongovernmental organizations that seek to dispel stereotypes or engage in rights monitoring within states. Third, individual countries, especially the United States, South Africa, and Brazil, should continue to support gay rights within the United Nations through lobbying for resolutions expressly recognizing LGBT rights, working behind the scenes to secure accreditation for deserving international LGBT rights organizations, and funding initiatives that support ground-level efforts to counteract antigay violence and discrimination.  According once again to the OHCHR report, numerous UN agencies have already integrated issues regarding sexual orientation and gender identity into their work including the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.  In tandem, nationally sanctioned human rights organs, like Kenya’s Human Rights Commission, can supplement such work through producing studies concerning the rights of LGBT individuals. Finally, more developed states should examine the possibility of linking foreign aid to developing states’ attempts to improve or protect the lives of those associated with or perceived to be members of the LGBT community. Positive change certainly and understandably isn’t expected overnight, but foreign aid recipients should no longer get a pass to play “don’t ask don’t tell” on fundamental LGBT rights.   As a whole, the OHCHR report is an incredibly far cry from the embarrassing November 2010 incident when UN member states—primarily from Africa, the Middle East, and Caribbea region—voted to remove a clause from a nonbinding resolution, which asked countries to protect sexual minorities against extrajudicial killings and impunity. (The clause was luckily reinserted into the resolution a month later following heavy pressure from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.) On the other hand, the recent advance of legislation in Nigeria instituting harsh penalties on those convicted of being LGBT or those that “abet” same-sex unions—despite threats from the United Kingdom and United States to cut off the country’s foreign aid—acts as an important reminder regarding the need for sustained, crosscutting, and comprehensive efforts to protect the most basic rights of LGBT people around the world.

Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo attends an official funeral ceremony in Abidjan in this November 15, 2003 file photo. (Luc Gnago/Courtesy Reuters) Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara’s administration has turned over former president Laurent Gbagbo to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer charges of crimes against humanity. The court’s prosecutor accuses Gbagbo of being responsible for at least three thousand deaths and numerous other acts of violence during a six-month stand-off in the aftermath of the presidential elections, which he claimed were rigged by Outtara despite approval from the international community. Gbagbo appears to retain at least some support in Ivory Coast. So his surrender to the ICC may make it more difficult in the short run for Ouattara to reconcile with the opposition. Further, the ICC is criticized by some for being unduly focused on the misdeeds of Africans. At present, a separate Hague tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, is in the final stages of its trial of former Liberian tyrant Charles Taylor. The ICC has under indictment Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir as well as numerous other Africans. Gbagbo’s conviction is by no means certain. Nevertheless, a consequence of the formal prosecution of former heads of state before The Hague tribunals may have some impact on a culture of impunity up to now enjoyed by African (and other) heads of state.

President Obama vowed in January 2009 to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Two years later, the White House continues to face challenges to that promise, leaving critics to suggest the facility will remain open for the foreseeable future.

George Weah, running mate of presidential candidate Winston Tubman of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), parades with his supporters during the party's rally in Montrovia October 9, 2011. (Luc Gnago/Courtesy Reuters) While international attention is focused on the gruesome death of Qaddafi and Kenya’s incursion into Somalia to fight al-Shabaab, Liberia is heating up. When the brutal warlord (and now born again) Prince Johnson announced that he would support Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in the November 8 runoff for the Liberia presidency against Winston Tubman, I observed that she needed a long spoon to sup with the devil. Now, the devil is demanding his due: thirty percent of government positions in return for his support. If she demurs, Prince Johnson hints that he will throw his support to the rival Winston Tubman ticket. However, that is unlikely considering Prince Johnson’s concern that a Tubman government would implement the shelved 2009 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, which said he should be prosecuted for his role in the civil war, and that Johnson-Sirleaf should be banned from politics. At the end of the day, shared concern about the TRC may facilitate a bargain between Prince Johnson and Johnson-Sirleaf. Enter another devil and the need for a second long spoon. To reach out to supporters of warlord and former chief of state Charles Taylor, Tubman publicly says that if Taylor is acquitted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, he would be free to return to Liberia and re-enter politics. He has also said that Taylor’s wife, Senator Jewel Taylor, would have a place in his presidential administration. Predictably, Congressmen Ed Royce (R.-Calif.) and Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) have strongly objected to Taylor’s return to Liberia under any circumstances. Royce said that if Taylor were to return, U.S. aid to Liberia, about sixteen percent of the country’s budget, would be “turned off.” The unpleasant reality is that Prince Johnson and Charles Taylor retain substantial support in Liberia and Johnson-Sirleaf and Tubman need their supporters (or many of them) if they are to win the runoff. To complicate matters, there are now contradictory reports that Tubman’s health is failing and that for the runoff he may be replaced by his vice presidential running mate, former soccer star and youth idol George Weah. The charismatic Weah might be a stronger runoff candidate against Johnson-Sirleaf than the seventy-year old Tubman, whatever the state of the latter’s health. But it is not clear whether candidates can be replaced or substituted for a runoff. And, while the Carter Center has given the first round of elections a clean bill of health, charges of fraud may be setting the stage for a repudiation of the elections by an aggrieved party. Liberia is a profoundly fractured country where much of the surviving political class is tainted by the civil wars. The Liberian press reports that when they learned that there would be a runoff, Tubman and Weah danced “a grand boogie.” Liberia’s friends must hope that the country doesn’t dance over the brink.

Liberian warlord-turned-presidential candidate Prince Johnson campaigns in the village of Demeh in Bomi County, in the West African country September 14, 2011. (Simon Akam/Courtesy Reuters) The first round of Liberia’s presidential elections left incumbent president Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson with about forty-four percent of the vote. Her principal rival, Winston Tubman (supported by vice presidential candidate footballer and youth idol George Weah) with about thirty-two percent, and Senator Prince Johnson with eleven percent. (While the Liberia National Elections Commission has not issued a final count, most of the polling centers have already reported.) There will be a run-off election between Sirleaf-Johnson and Tubman in early November because no candidate received a constitutionally-mandated majority of the votes. Sen. Prince Johnson has announced that he will support Sirleaf-Johnson, virtually guaranteeing that she will win the run-off. Over the past few days, as it has become clear that nobody had won a majority of the votes and that there would be a run-off, Johnson has gloried in his kingmaker role. Though I cannot prove it, almost certainly Sirleaf-Johnson and Prince Johnson did a deal. (Prince Johnson claims he decided to support Sirleaf-Johnson because he believes Tubman supporters want him tried for war crimes.) If so, Sirleaf-Johnson has chosen to sup with the devil; I hope she has a long spoon. Prince Johnson comes from Nimba County and has been the standard bearer of the Gio and Mano people. Nimba county is the second largest constituency in Liberia. He is also a former warlord whose bloodthirstiness is legendary. During the first Liberia civil war he captured chief of state Samuel Doe and oversaw his torture and execution while drinking Budweiser. He had the episode videotaped and posted it around the world; it can still be viewed on YouTube. (You will not find the link here.) Like Sirleaf-Johnson, he was allied with Charles Taylor and later broke with him. During the Sirleaf-Johnson presidency, he has been a fierce critic of her administration. Prince Johnson claims to have been Born Again and to be reconciled with Doe’s family. Over the weekend there was sufficient electoral violence in Monrovia to prompt International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to warn that “resorting to violence will not be tolerated.” Whatever the terms of Sirleaf-Johnson’s deal with Prince Johnson, the fact that it virtually guarantees her victory in the run-off probably reduces the likelihood of significant further violence. As I have written before, and as her Nobel Peace Prize attests, Sirleaf-Johnson is more popular outside of Liberia than in it. But a political deal with Prince Johnson – necessary though it probably was – will not burnish her historical reputation.

Kenya's former Higher Education Minister William Samoei Ruto (front L) sits in a courtroom of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands September 1, 2011. (Bas Czerwinski/Courtesy Reuters) The International Criminal Court (ICC) started a series of hearings today for the “Ocampo Six”--the Kenyan political figures indicted on several counts of crimes against humanity relating to the country’s 2007-2008 post-election violence that killed over one thousand people and displaced over half a million. The hearings at The Hague will determine whether full-fledged trials will begin for the six indicted Kenyans, and I’ve written previously about the investigations, not least because of the apparent attempts to obstruct them. Yesterday, the ICC denied a formal appeal to suspend the trials. Charlie Warren, a former African program intern and now interdepartmental program associate at CFR, has a new piece out today in which he discusses some of the issues facing the ICC and its prosecutor. “The International Criminal Court and Kenya: Ocampo’s Six an Important Hurdle for ICC” is published on African Arguments, part of a larger project from the Royal African Society (UK) and the Social Science Research Council. The Kenyan hearings will last for the next few weeks and will attract a great deal of local as well as international coverage. Given the Court’s uneasy relationship with the continent--its current prosecutions are only of African political figures--and the spate of poll violence in Ivory Coast, the ICC faces an important question: can its prosecutions help to reduce future bouts of electoral conflict across Africa? I think the answer is ‘yes,’ but the Kenyan hearings provide a unique opportunity for the Court and its prosecutor to persuade the international community of that larger case. Read Charlie’s article here.

A combination of photos shows Saif al-Islam and his father Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (Reuters Staff/ Courtesy Reuters)   With the collapse of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, attention has naturally turned to bringing the former strongman to justice. But where? In late June, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant, citing the dictator’s crimes against humanity. Self-styled foreign policy “realists” responded with angst, predicting the specter of prosecution would only prolong the conflict, by eliminating the possibility of a negotiated settlement. The Internationalist rejected this alleged peace-justice trade-off, predicting the warrant would only hasten the collapse of his political support. (Future historians will have to sift through the record to see who was right). The hot debate now is whether the ICC is the proper venue for holding Qaddafi to account—or whether a national, Libyan-owned judicial proceeding should take precedence. Here’s one vote for transferring Qaddafi to The Hague as soon as he’s apprehended. Whether domestic or international tribunals are better at delivering justice and accountability for atrocities remains a bone of contention. Over the past two decades, the international community has experimented with different models. These include international tribunals, including the ICC and, beforehand, the ad hoc International Criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR); various domestic tribunals, such as Argentina’s for crimes committed during the “dirty war”; and a variety of “hybrid” institutions, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone (which relied on judges from Uganda, Northern Ireland, and Samoa but occurred in the country) and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal for Cambodia (which had a mixture of national and international judges). There is much to be said for relying on domestic courts to address crimes committed in the territory of the state in question. All things being equal, such proceedings are more likely to be perceived as legitimate by the country’s population, while reinforcing the rule of law and helping to bolster national legal institutions and systems. The administration of George W. Bush repeatedly advocated for the national approach on these grounds—a stance reinforced, of course, by its animus toward the ICC.  The official U.S. government position appears to be that Qaddafi’s legal fate rests in the hands of Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC). The U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, declared on Tuesday, “The Libyan people will have to decide whether to try Muammar al-Qaddafi themselves for crimes against his people, or surrender him to face justice before the ICC.” What the TNC will ultimately decide is unclear. The same goes for Saif al-Islam, Qaddafi’s son and Libya’s former de facto prime minister, who also faces an ICC arrest warrant and remains at large, for now. “Everything is possible, it is up to the TNC to decide,” TNC envoy to Paris Mansour Saif al-Nasr stated on Monday, “It is possible that he [Saif] will be handed over to the ICC but it’s also possible he won’t.” The problem, of course, is that a country must have a competent judicial system to undertake such trials in an unbiased and professional manner. The Rome Statute of the ICC accepts this logic, by embracing the principle of complementarity. That is, the Court can claim jurisdiction on one of only two conditions: when the country lacks a functioning judicial system, or when state authorities have manifestly failed to carry out a credible investigation into alleged atrocity crimes. If there were ever a strong case for ICC jurisdiction, it is Libya—a country with no functioning judicial system after four decades of arbitrary, dictatorial rule. Given the monumental governance challenges confronting the TNC, it could take years of international assistance before the Libyan state is capable of conducting a credible trial of Qaddafi and his henchmen. And yet there will be enormous pressure, given the understandable thirst for retribution, for the TNC (or its immediate successor) to fast-track Qaddafi to trial in a judicial proceeding that could become a farce. Provided that Qaddafi is captured alive—and kept that way—there are several potential scenarios in the coming weeks. The first, most straightforward, and ideal, would simply be for the TNC to transfer Qaddafi and his fellow defendants to The Hague to face the ICC. A second scenario would be to conduct a trial in Libya first. Earlier today TNC Spokesperson Abdel Hafiz Ghoga suggested that the dictator would have to face trial in Libya before facing the ICC. It is unclear, however, that the ICC judges, having begun a legal proceeding against Qaddafi, would agree to an in-country trial, even if formally petitioned by the new authorities in Tripoli, since it would require Libya to persuade the court of its capacity to conduct such a complicated judicial proceeding. The third scenario would be for the UN Security Council (UNSC) to weigh in on behalf of the Court. If the latter balks at transferring the Qaddafis, the ICC could inform the Security Council of Libyan non-compliance. The UNSC, however, has been rather weak at being the attack dog of the ICC. Under a fourth scenario, the UNSC could weigh in not on the side of the Court but the TNC, invoking Article 16 of the Rome Statute, which permits a one-year deferral of any ICC prosecution, to suspend ICC proceedings. This could allow the new Libyan authorities time to put into place new institutions and mount their own trials. The downside of this option, as suggested above, is that one year is an awfully short time horizon for getting this done. A final scenario would be for the UN Security Council to create a hybrid trial, along the lines of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was set up jointly between that country and the United Nations. This option would essentially split the difference: allowing the trial(s) to occur in Libya itself, while providing sufficient external judicial expertise, as well as financial and other resources, to ensure a credible, professional proceeding. It is unclear, as of this writing, which scenario is most likely. And Qaddafi may yet escape justice by skipping town to Angola or Zimbabwe—neither of which is party to the ICC. Sometimes it pays to keep it simple.  Libya’s new leadership will also have plenty of other problems on its plate.  For now, the Libyan rebels can likely accomplish the most by making Saif al-Islam—who infamously shouted, “To Hell with the ICC” on Monday—face that very institution with his dad by his side.

A Colombian navy soldier collects packages of cocaine in Cartagena after they were shown to the media September 12, 2010. Around 1,133 kg of drugs were seized during an operation near Cartagena, according to authorities (Jairo Castilla/ Courtesy Reuters). This week the White House released an ambitious Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. It promises a massive U.S. policy response to a burgeoning global threat, but the Internationalist feels sorry for whoever must implement it. For, President Obama’s cover letter observes—without irony— “this strategy sets out 56 priority actions.” The strategy reminds me of the Red Queen, who told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Still, there’s much to applaud in the strategy, beginning with its threat assessment. Transnational organized crime (TOC) has been a prime beneficiary of globalization. Once hierarchical and specialized, TOC groups are increasingly decentralized, able to hopscotch across sovereign jurisdictions and adapt products and supply chains. Their fluid and networked structure allows them to sidestep interdiction efforts and renders traditional law enforcement obsolete. As the strategy makes clear, TOC is driving a “convergence of transnational threats” that undermine global security and prosperity.  From Colombia to Afghanistan to Myanmar, insurgencies increasingly rely on illicit arms and drug revenues for financial support. Criminal syndicates foster corruption to skirt legal structures, weakening fragile states from Guatemala to Guinea-Bissau. (Actually, my latest book Weak Links devotes an entire chapter to the link between TOC and fragile states. While it is more uneven than often presumed, it is certainly a salient challenge.) Criminals and terrorists are appropriating each others’ strategies—and forming alliances. Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah support themselves through narcotics and other illicit commodities, even as WMD proliferators exploit black market routes through the Caucasus. Finally, traffickers engage in cybercrime, money laundering, and intellectual property theft, all of which undermine confidence in the global economic and financial system. The strategy sets out 56 “priority actions,” grouped into six clusters. Start at Home: Too often, transnational crime has been depicted as an evil from abroad visited upon American shores. Refreshingly, the White House strategy takes a more honest approach, declaring a mission to “reduce the demand for illicit drugs in the United States, thereby denying funding to illicit trafficking organizations.” This is a laudable goal, but how this administration will succeed where others have failed remains unclear. The strategy is also less than innovative in its orthodox treatment of drug criminalization, which counterproductively increases profit margins for traffickers. Enhance Intelligence and Information Sharing: Following 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community shifted its overwhelming focus to counterterrorism. The administration lays out a welcome change of tack, pledging to allocate more resources towards TOC. Enhanced intelligence sharing with foreign partners, as well as among federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, acknowledges the globalized threat, and that no agency can tackle TOC in isolation. Protect the Financial System and Strategic Markets: The strategy also acknowledges TOC groups’ infiltration into legitimate commerce and how it undermines confidence in financial systems and the global economy. To address the threat, the Obama administration commits the U.S. government to monitor “strategic and emerging markets,” alert businesses if they are threatened by criminal enterprises, and design safeguards to protect investments. The strategy also outlines a special focus on combating cybercrime and intellectual property right (IPR) violations, as well as designating foreign TOC threats and their government supporters. These concrete goals are promising, but they will be truly effective only if they are implemented multilaterally—and broadly enough for commercial actors to regain confidence. Strengthen Interdiction, Investigations, and Prosecutions: Combating transnational organized crime requires providing law enforcement officials with innovative tools. To this end, the strategy envisions a new executive order to block property of major TOC groups, a presidential proclamation barring entry into the US of designated TOC targets, an augmented reward program leading to the arrest and conviction of major TOC figures, and a raft of legislative proposals providing new statutory authorities “to investigate, interdict, and prosecute the activities of top transnational criminal networks.” Expanding these executive branch authorities is critical, but it will require careful negotiations with relevant congressional committees. Disrupt Drug Trafficking and Its Facilitation of Other Transnational Threats: Forty years after it was declared by President Nixon, the “War on Drugs” lives on. The new strategy recommits the United States to working with other countries to “support for drug crop reduction, promotion of alternative livelihoods, and partner nation capacity building”—including “complementary and comprehensive assistance programs across the prevention, intervention, and enforcement spectrum.” Alas, little here is new. Past experience suggests that successes in one country (as in Colombia, where coca production declined 15% in 2010), are often offset by production surges elsewhere (most recently, in Peru, which now rivals Colombia as a producer)—a phenomenon scholars of the drug trade term “the balloon effect.” Build International Capacity, Cooperation, and Partnerships: Finally, the strategy promises a “renewed commitment to multilateral diplomacy,” as well as efforts to build the capacity of “nations that have the will to fulfill their international law enforcement commitments but lack the necessary means.” The document is disappointingly vague, however, on what form this renewed multilateralism will take—merely offering a laundry list of global and regional institutions with which the United States will continue to work. It is also silent on how the United States will address those countries—from Myanmar to Venezuela—that have the capacity but lack the will to attack TOC. In the end, the most daunting task outlined by the strategy may be interagency coordination within the United States—and among financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, and national security apparatuses across the world. The strategy is an essential step in the battle against TOC, if only because it updates national policy by acknowledging how much the threat has evolved. It might not stymie TOC, but at least we’re running to stand still instead of falling behind.

A Chadian refugee sits with his possessions in North Africa (Finbarr O'Reilly/Courtesy Reuters) Today, the Internationalist would like to draw your attention to a disturbing phenomenon ignored by the foreign policy community but all too common in global conflict zones: The pervasive sexual abuse of men in war. Women, of course, bear the main brunt of wartime sexual violence—as they always have. Last December, my CFR colleague Mark Lagon hosted a sobering meeting with the eminent legal scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. Now the special gender adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mackinnon in 2000 argued the path-breaking legal case Kadic vs. Karadzic—about  mass Serbian rape of Bosnian women—which for the first time established mass rape as an act of genocide. Over the past two decades, international attention to rape as a weapon of war has been growing. Documentary filmmakers have often been in the forefront. In 2006 Lisa F. Jackson traveled to DRC to interview thousands of rape victims, and their perpetrators. Her resulting film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution condemning rape as a weapon of war. Several of my CFR colleagues—including Laurie Garrett, Isobel Coleman, and Matthew Waxman—have spoken and written eloquently on the scope of such atrocities and the need to hold perpetrators accountable. At the same time, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, the United Nations (UN) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “barely acknowledge” the pervasive sexual violence against men that occurs in modern war. The article documents the terrible suffering of a Congolese refugee who was captured by rebels and raped multiple times per day, and watched countless other men be similarly brutalized. 22% of men in Eastern Congo reported being victims of sexual violence, compared to 30% of women. One victim reported the crime to police, and was laughed at. A doctor in whom he confided merely gave him Panadol (a local equivalent of Tylenol). He described: “Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.” The violence, and the disregard, is global. 80% of Bosnian males imprisoned in concentration camps and 76% of El Salvadoran male political prisoners report sexual abuse. Yet, of roughly 4,000 NGOs addressing wartime sexual violence, only 3% mentioned male victims (and usually only in passing). International institutions are also falling short. They should be lauded for attempting to address mass violence against women during wartime, but the protection and outreach must be extended to all victims. The Guardian quoted one refugee who sought help from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was told “‘we have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.’” Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict counters that UNHCR does assist both men and women, but that women are “overwhelmingly” the victims. Emerging studies, however, suggest sexual violence against men is more widespread than commonly acknowledged. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that some countries do not criminalize sexual abuse of men, as this report (PDF) by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documents. International humanitarian law criminalized rape in the twentieth century, but “prosecution was nonexistent” during the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its Rwandan counterpart (ICTR) included rape in the category of crimes against humanity, war crime, and genocide, but abuse against women earned harsher punishment than abuse against men. However, Lara Stemple of the University of California’s Health and Human Rights Law project also notes that: “There are dozens of references to “violence against women” — defined to include sexual violence — in United Nations human rights resolutions, treaties and agreements, but most don’t mention sexual violence against men.” She adds: "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates ’female’ with ’victim’, thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability." The Internationalist recognizes that this is not an easy subject for men, in particular, to acknowledge. But we all need to shine the spotlight on such suffering to underscore that sexual abuse, no matter the gender of the victim, is abhorrent—and that perpetrators must be held to account. And the world needs to provide legal resources and psychological support to men who demonstrate the courage to come forward in reporting such crimes, despite the social stigma so often attached to their plight.

ICC chief prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo arrives at a news conference to comment on the arrest warrant issued for Libyan leader Qaddafi in The Hague (Jerry Lampen/ Courtesy Reuters). Monday’s decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue a warrant for the arrest of Muammar al-Qaddafi for crimes against humanity has occasioned much gnashing of teeth from foreign policy realists like John Bolton, who clearly wish the three-judge panel had held its fire until the armed conflict in Libya had ended. What incentive does the Libyan leader have to relinquish power now, when he faces the prospect of being frog-marched to The Hague? Haven’t we learned by now that accountability must be sacrificed in the interest of peace—or at a minimum, deferred until the shooting stops? Well, no. The oft-invoked trade-off between peace and justice is less persuasive than meets the eye. It rests on an assumption that the threat of prosecution dissuades leaders from yielding power and complicates negotiations between perpetrators of mass atrocities and their opponents. “Heads of state are less inclined to consider a negotiated settlement, once they’re in an armed conflict like this, if they have an international indictment hanging over their heads,” claims Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation. Earlier this month, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl stated the thesis baldly: “The Libyans are stuck in a civil war in large part because of Gaddafi’s international prosecution.” The apparent policy conclusion is that sometimes impunity trumps accountability. This marks the second time that the ICC has indicted a sitting head of state. In 2005, the ICC indicted Omar al-Bashir for alleged crimes committed in Darfur. The Sudanese leader, of course, has remained free for the past six years, though not entirely at liberty. He was due to travel to China Monday, but had to postpone meetings there when Turkmenistan denied a request for his plane to proceed through its airspace. Admittedly, this is a far cry from bringing Bashir to justice. But pariah status can limit leaders’ international influence and set the stage for future marginalization and punishment.  As Mark Kersten explains, “champions of international criminal justice point to the marginalization of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian crisis, barring them from participating in (and presumably de-railing) the Dayton peace talks.” Furthermore, the United States abstained from the UN Security Council (UNSC) vote that referred Bashir to the ICC, weakening Bashir’s indictment. However, the United States joined the United Kingdom, France, and non-ICC members of China and Russia to support the UNSC resolution authorizing force in Libya.  The diverse coalition that has vowed to stop Qaddafi indicates that the international community is likely to uphold Qaddafi’s ICC arrest warrant more faithfully than Bashir’s.  The ICC indictment also expands the moral basis for the NATO-led intervention, which may be helpful in bolstering support from wavering allied publics. Historical experience suggests that the failure to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions sows the seeds of future violence.  A case in point is Sierra Leone. Misguided amnesty in 1999 for the warlord Foday Sankoh presumed that he would be satisfied with a peace settlement. But soon after Sankoh was pardoned, he was leading rebel forces in violent campaigns that helped plunge the nation into chaos once again. Qaddafi has already dug in his heels, declaring that he’s not going anywhere, and the latest ICC action will not affect his calculations. As Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch notes: “It beggars belief that a dictator who has gripped power for over forty years would be frozen in place by this arrest warrant.” Qaddafi and his inner circle have repeatedly rebuffed past offers to seek exile abroad. Indeed, an argument can be made that the warrant will hasten rather than delay Qaddafi’s departure from power, because it is yet another step in delegitimizing his rule. The warrant not only condemned Qaddafi, but also his son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his brother in law, the chief of military intelligence, Abdullah al-Sanoussi, for their alleged roles in the murder of hundreds of Libyan civilians since mid-February 2011. The threat of punishment for involvement in the Qaddafi regime’s criminal actions may well generate new high-ranking defections.

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma (L) sits next to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (R) before their meeting in Tripoli in this handout picture taken May 30, 2011. (Ho New/Courtesy Reuters) South African President Jacob Zuma, speaking at a high-level Africa Union panel on Libya in Pretoria, recently warned NATO against the "political assassination" of Muammar Qaddafi. Following the line of other African heads of state, Zuma said that UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973 authorized military action only for the protection of the Libyan people and to facilitate humanitarian relief -- not regime change. Zuma also called for a negotiated compromise between Qaddafi and the rebel Transitional National Council. The Libyan crisis has gone on longer than most observers expected when South Africa voted on March 17 for UNSCR 1973. Zuma must walk a fine line as he seeks the leadership of the African Union, preserves his liberation credentials -- and yet also looks over his shoulder at the Democratic Alliance (DA), which did better than many expected among black voters in April’s local government elections, despite its image as a predominately white and middle class party.    The ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), was a liberation movement during the days of apartheid and received funding and political support from Qaddafi. Further, many of Zuma’s ANC constituents will not be happy at the spectacle of NATO bombs apparently intended to bring about regime change.   On the other hand, the opposition Democratic Alliance  has welcomed Qaddafi’s indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The party’s spokesman said that Qaddafi has lost all legitimacy and only his arrest and prosecution will lead to democracy and peace in Libya. The DA called on the Zuma government to support the ICC’s indictment and recalled that South Africa’s constitution recognizes international law.   The ICC indictment may make Zuma’s way out -- a negotiated settlement between Qaddafi and the rebels -- more difficult. And the DA will take political advantage of Zuma appearing to be "soft" on Qaddafi, especially now that he is indicted.