[Ines Bartholomae]

Dear All,
FYI: An article about Africa and the African Union in terms of IR (International Relations).
Ines

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Why is the International Criminal Court picking only on Africa?
By David Bosco,March 29, 2013 (Washington Post)

David Bosco is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service. His book on the International Criminal Court, “Rough Justice,” will be published this fall.
Almost 15 years ago, delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in a crowded conference room in Rome, cheering, chanting and even shedding a few tears. After weeks of tense negotiations, they had drafted a charter for a permanent court tasked with prosecuting genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes around the world.
Kofi Annan, then U.N. secretary general, cast the new International Criminal Court in epochal terms: “Until now, when powerful men committed crimes against humanity, they knew that so long as they remained powerful, no earthly court could judge them.”
That earthly court is now rooted. Its glassy headquarters on the outskirts of the Hague houses more than 1,000 lawyers, investigators and staff members from dozens of countries. Judges hail from all regions of the world.
But for an institution with a global mission and an international staff, its focus has been very specific: After more than a decade, all eight investigations the court has opened have been in Africa. All the individuals indicted by the court — more than two dozen — have been African. Annan’s proclamation notwithstanding, some very powerful people in other parts of the world have avoided investigation.
The court began its work in Uganda and Congo, where it focused mostly on crimes by militia groups (one key militia leader accused of crimes in Congo surrendered to the court this month). In 2005 came a major investigation into allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan. Then the court launched inquiries in the Central African Republic and Kenya. And in 2011, the prosecutor opened an investigation of violence in Ivory Coast.Around the same time, the ICC jumped into the Libya imbroglio, ultimately indicting Moammar Gaddafi, his son and the regime’s intelligence chief. Most recently, the court announced its intention to scrutinize atrocities in Mali.
African leaders have taken note of the ICC’s intense interest in their continent. The backlash swelled after the court indicted Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2009. Many African officials argued that the court’s intervention would torpedo chances for a negotiated solution to that country’s conflicts. Several African governments pushed the court to reconsider. The African Union, which represents more than 50 nations, even instructed its members that they had no legal obligation to arrest Bashir. Malawi’s president complained that “subject[ing] a sovereign head of state to a warrant of arrest is undermining African solidarity and African peace and security.”
To this day, the A.U. has refused to allow the ICC to establish a liaison office at its headquarters. There are even plans for an African criminal court that might displace the ICC.
Former A.U. chairman Jean Ping has suggested to journalists that the court is a neocolonial plaything and that “Africa has been a place to experiment with their ideas.” At an African summit meeting in 2009, he accused the ICC of ignoring crimes in other parts of the world: “Why Africa only? Why were these laws not applied on Israel, Sri Lanka and Chechnya and its application is confined to Africa?”
Those kinds of complaints land mostly on the desk of the court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. Originally from Gambia, she was elected in December 2011 with strong support from African states and has made repairing the rift between the court and the continent a priority. Along the way, she has fired back at some of the court’s African critics, insisting that seeking justice for victims on the continent is hardly evidence of discrimination.
“All of the victims in our cases in Africa are African victims,” she has said. “And they are the ones who are suffering these crimes.”
The latest developments in Kenya may test Bensouda’s reconciliation efforts. In early March, Kenyans elected as president Uhuru Kenyatta, who was indicted by the court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in 2008. There’s evidence that by making him appear to be a victim of a mostly Western-funded court, the indictment helped Kenyatta attract votes. A Kenyatta voter described the court to the New York Times as “a tool of Western countries to manipulate undeveloped countries.”
In the wake of his victory, Kenyatta’s lawyers demanded that the court dismiss the case against him, while the ICC prosecutor insisted that it would go forward.
Why is the world’s first criminal court picking on Africa? There are several explanations for the regional focus. Persistent conflict plagues several parts of Africa, and the continent hosts some of the globe’s weakest states. Dozens of African countries chose to join the court, giving the institution broad jurisdiction over violence inside their borders. Congo, Uganda, the Central African Republic and Ivory Coasteven explicitly asked the court to investigate atrocities on their territory.
Asian and Arab states have been much more reluctant to join, and that has created an uneven jurisdictional landscape. The court cannot reach inside Syria or Sri Lanka, for example, but it can investigate crimes in the Central African Republic, Congo and Mali. (The United States has not joined the ICC, limiting the court’s jurisdiction over U.S. officials or troops.)
The U.N. Security Council does have the power to expand the court’s reach. By “referring” a case to the ICC, it creates jurisdiction even over states that have not joined the court. However, in the cases when it has done so — Sudan and Libya — it’s given the court more room to operate inside Africa. The council has declined to do the same in Syria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea and other non-African states where violence and repression are endemic.

[Ines Bartholomae]

Dear All,

Please find below the translation of Naakow’s explanation of ‘faultlines’  for us.

Ines

Dear participants, 

I appreciate your questions and would like to share with you some thoughts on understanding faultlines.

According to TRANSCEND International’s tehroetical perspective, beyond the hegelian linear-chronological teleological understanding, we use the concept of dialictics as to describe inner dtiving forces, and inner dynamics which occur as synchronic/simultaneous and rather circular processes: Social phenomena. Thus, our understanding of dialectics is not the hegelian procedural chronology of first a thesis which then is directly followed by an ani-thesis culminating in a synthesis – this posits some sort of observable linearity and causality. With cause preceding effect. Then again cause… etc. Societal events are subject to interdepency and independent processes cannot be traced back neatly because of the combinatorial variety of possible relations. That‘s true for societal systems.

Therefore we use the term „contradictions‘ as driving forces of societal dialectics. Our focus is not on antithetic contradictions which simply might neutralise eachother, but rather we focus on interactive actions which become observable as actio and reactio, as force and counterforce. The challenge is to know where to look for those actio-reactio processes. The pursuit of the goal of one player results in an adjustment of the goal of other players in a societal system. Such adjustments, such reactions  can be violent or conciliatory & constructive. This is where our specific vantage point comes into play: Here our interest is determined by our interest in peace and conflict studies.

Prof. Galtung‘s point has been the following:

Is it possible to observe this dynamic actio-reactio pattern of societal systems, and to make them accessible to a scientific observation and commentary in order to predict and prevent violent outbreaks and to consistently recognize conciliatory constructive developments in order to promote them and help them unfold?

When analyzing a specific “issue” TRANSCEND’s approach to peace research systematically inspects and investigates 8 „faultlines“, which pervade the homosphere and are inherent in each society. In a book published together with Kees Van der Veer, Prof. Galtung lists 13 such ,areas of potential tension‘ [http://www.rozenbergps.com/images/omslagen/01400.gif] – however, the 8 ,faultlines‘ given to you are perfectly sufficient to assess a given portion of reality under your scrutiny in a more accurate manner as you simply have more variables to infer from. Lets call these faultlines ,potential breaking points‘: they are indicative spots for potentially manifest contradiction in societies. These fields are ,potential breaking points‘ of social systems.

As with tectonic faultlines in geology, our faultlines are the preferred place to look out for the actio-reactio dynamics of societal systems, which can lead lead to those destructive erruptions shown on TV and in the news papers in terms of collectively organized violence – depending on the degree and intensity of the contradiction & tension at the level of the fautlines. In closing: You look for contradictions along these faultlines just like you look for the  epicentre of an earthquake along tectonic faultlines.

 

[Ines Bartholomae]

Dear All,

Pls see attached reader about

“PEACE, CONFLICT, AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA  (2011)”

Ines

[Author]

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