In which I wish I’d gone to law school

Over at Wronging Rights, Kate and Amanda are puzzling over a recent TIME article that states the International Criminal Court is “compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein.”

This article—which name-drops George Clooney, weirdly enough—raises all sorts of questions. Kate and Amanda, who are Actually Lawyers, ask (and attempt to answer, somewhat) these questions far better than I can, given that I have but a single international human rights law class under my belt. That said, as I understand it, the ICC can’t just open investigations willy-nilly.

The ICC can only open a case if it: 1) is referred to them either by a state involved in the case (as in Uganda) or by the Security Council (as in Darfur, Sudan in 2005 and Libya); or 2) involves alleged crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction, defined as crimes in which “the accused is a national of a State Party or a State otherwise accepting the jurisdiction of the Court” or crimes that “took place on the territory of a State Party or a State otherwise accepting the jurisdiction of the Court.”

The problem here is that neither Sudan nor the newly formed South Sudan is a state party to the ICC, meaning the only way this case makes sense is if the Security Council referred it, which it didn’t. Kate and Amanda ask:

So, uh, what gives? Did the TIME reporter get an Enough Project report and mistakenly conclude it was an internal ICC memo? Or is there some other reason why the ICC, a court of limited jurisdiction and limited resources, would be spending the latter on an investigation that is clearly outside of the former?

This is, to me, where things get sort of crazy. Kate and Amanda asked law professor Kevin Jon Heller to weigh in, which he did:

My best guess is — as they suggest — that the OTP has received assurances from the new South Sudanese government that it will either (1) ratify the Rome Statute and accept the Court’s jurisdiction retroactively, or (2) file a declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute accepting jurisdiction on an hoc basis over the crimes the OTP is investigating. Either way, the issue would be how far back in time South Sudan could accept the Court’s jurisdiction.

He goes on to suggest a weirder (to me—speak up, international human rights lawyers, if you have something even weirder to add!) possibility:

South Sudan could invoke the Eichmann “precedent” and argue that a state should have the right to give the Court retroactive jurisdiction over any and all crimes committed against its citizens, even if the state did not formally exist at the time of their commission.

Amanda responds with a pretty fascinating discussion of the difference between passive personality jurisdiction and active personality jurisdiction that I won’t attempt to recap here but that seems to indicate that the Eichmann precedent won’t actually get the ICC very far.

I’ve written before about my love-hate relationship with the ICC that’s mostly hate, and this latest apparently overreaching on the part of Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo feels like yet another misstep in a series of horrible missteps. That said, the pretend law geek inside of me is fascinated by it, and I’m looking forward to seeing if and how the ICC can justify this investigation as being under their jurisdiction.

GV Sudan: Checking in with Sudan Vote Monitor

On the eve of Sudan’s 2010 presidential elections, I interviewed Fareed Zein, who heads the citizen election monitoring project Sudan Vote Monitor. On Wednesday I checked in with Zein to get his thoughts on the project now that the elections have ended.

My next post is up at Global Voices Online:

On the eve of Sudan's 2010 presidential elections, I interviewed Fareed Zein, who heads the citizen election monitoring project Sudan Vote Monitor, for the Technology for Transparency Project. Zein was hopeful that the project would bring greater transparency to the country's first democratic elections in more than two decades. “There was basically no idea what was going on on the ground” during previous political events, Zein said at the time. “What we're hoping to do is shine a light and give people access to events that are occurring at remote election centers.” On Wednesday I checked in with Zein to get his thoughts on the project now that the elections have ended.

Read the interview »

Interview with Sudan Vote Monitor

On Friday I spoke with Fareed Zein, who heads the Ushahidi-based project Sudan Vote Monitor. The project lets citizens report problems with access, illegal campaigning, voter harassment and other aspects of the election.

Sudan’s first multiparty elections in over two decades began yesterday (New York Times, Al Jazeera) despite the fact that the majority of opposition parties are boycotting the entire process.

The election — already marred by a lack of actual ballots, long waits at polling places and mix-ups in the symbols printed on the ballots (many voters are illiterate, and symbols are used to represent different parties and candidates) — is widely seen as a prelude to the upcoming referendum on the independence of Southern Sudan.

On Friday I spoke with Fareed Zein, who heads the Ushahidi-based project Sudan Vote Monitor. The project lets citizens report problems with access, illegal campaigning, voter harassment and other aspects of the election. So far the site has received over 100 reports in both English and Arabic (volunteers at Meedan are helping with translation). Zein, who was busy working to get an SMS short code set up and doing some last-minute testing, spoke a little bit about his hopes for the impact of Sudan Vote Monitor:

I would say even if the election doesn’t take place we’ve already made history, and that’s not to say that that’s where we’ll stop, but this is a groundbreaking undertaking. We’ve already done a big service to just introduce the concept, introduce the possibility.

Other groups have specific activist motivations. They have a different tack. Ours is just getting access to information because the Sudanese people as well as the rest of the world have not had that in previous events. Others will take that to the next level and try to apply pressure for change.

You can read the whole interview and listen to the podcast of our chat at the Technology for Transparency Network.

GV Transparency: Is ICT all it’s cracked up to be?

As part of the Global Voices Technology for Transparency Network, my fellow researchers and I will be blogging about ICT all over the world. My first post, on a failed ICT for governance project in Sudan and the implications for tech efforts during the upcoming elections, went up today.

As part of the Global Voices Technology for Transparency Network, my fellow researchers and I will be blogging about ICT all over the world. My first post, on a failed ICT for governance project in Sudan and the implications for tech efforts during the upcoming elections, went up today:

In a December 2009 Global Voices article titled “ICT4D: Past mistakes, future wisdom,” Aparna Ray points out that many technology for development projects have “started with a bang and later died with a whimper.” According to a recent article in the Financial Times, such is the fate of a multimillion dollar World Bank plan to supply Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, with computers and Internet access.

Read the full article »

We’re hoping to get a discussion going over at Global Voices that not only highlights the tremendous power of the Internet and other digital tools, but also explores the challenges and difficulties of using these tools for political development and civic engagement. I welcome your comments here and on the original post.

Mamdani vs. Prendergast: the video

Last month I attended The Darfur Debate, a conversation between African political expert Mahmood Mamdani and Darfur advocate John Prendergast. In case my arbitrary points-laden round-up wasn’t enough, you can now watch the video yourself, courtesy of Columbia’s YouTube account:

Let me know if you agree with my assessments of Prendergast’s sartorial choices.