Charles Taylor Trial (Credit: BBC)

I just ran across this fascinating Time interview with Stephen Rapp, who was previously chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (H/T Shelby Grossman). Rapp states:

The concern all of us had was that we were conducting justice in a comfortable courtroom with long trials and well-paid attorneys. Prisoners had single cells, and they had committed the worst crimes. A mile away in the local prison there were simply no resources. Cases can’t go forward, witnesses are lost, and people stay in detention for many years at a stretch. [If I was] to do it over, I would try to develop a court within the national system. That would be my preference. Maybe not a court that costs $30 million a year like the Special Court, but an appropriate court.

This is something I thought about while writing the post “Villains & Supervillains,” after my trip to The Hague with the ICC Student Network last year, but never fully articulated.

I understand that many of these “supervillians” - war criminals, genocidaires, leaders who have led crimes against humanity, are some of the worst perpetrators in that world. For that reason, they receive special attention, and they are given fair trials and adequate living conditions. They are allowed to represent themselves in court, and a great deal of attention is paid to their trials to ensure they are truly fair. This all makes complete sense, because their trials are, and should be, high profile and well publicized in order to draw attention to their horrific crimes and resulting punishments, and thereby contribute to ending the atmosphere of impunity worldwide. Without fair trials and without widespread publicity of these proceedings, there is no chance that the justice being done will deter future perpetrators (though the possibility of deterrence itself is arguable).

But the greater travesty and grosser injustice is the fact that we are pumping millions of dollars into international courts which have doubtful impacts, and are simultaneously completely ignoring the life-threatening conditions in the national justice systems of many developing countries. Isn’t this ironic? While war criminals are getting the royal treatment, everyday people - many of them poor - are arbitrarily detained in various African countries, often for stealing a piece of bread or for political reasons. In many African countries, torture continues to be widespread as an interrogative tool despite laws in the books prohibiting it.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 80% of prisoners are in pre-trial detention, and there is no law criminalizing torture. In Kenya, even petty offenders must wait an average of 5 years to have their case heard. In Kampala, Uganda, many prisons are overcrowded, often at 300% of capacity. And in Nigeria, women are held alongside men in prison, often leading to rape and sexual violence. In Zimbabwe, news reports have shown emaciated inmates starving to death from lack of food, often forced to catch and eat rats to survive.

The criminal justice systems of many developing countries are in far worse conditions than that of the U.S., and are arbitrary, unfair, and life-threatening. If the international community devoted one-tenth of the attention to this issue as they do to providing fair trials to supervillains, then many more innocent lives would be saved.

As the status quo stands, a guy who is responsible for the genocide of thousands gets a lawyer of his own and a fair trial, while the poor, innocent, arbitrarily detained are tortured and starve to death without ever having access to counsel. Is this fair, or just? I don’t think so. This doesn’t mean we should pay less attention to war criminals, but that we should work harder to ensure a fair trial to those who are not.

I wanted to briefly post these two talks, which I absolutely absolutely loved recently.

1. Shashi Tharoor, on India’s “soft power”

Click here to watch it (unfortunately TED won’t let me embed it for some strange reason).

Shashi Tharoor was elected to India’s parliament in May 2009, representing Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala as minister for external affairs. You can follow him on Twitter @shashitharoor - exciting if you’re a social media/politics nerd like me. In the past, Tharoor has worked with the UN as High Commissioner for Refugees, and on peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia (he came in a close 2nd behind Ban Ki-Moon in nominations for Secretary General!). I think it’s immmensely exciting that people like him are entering the Indian political arena, and I’m looking forward to seeing how his career pans out.

This TED talk is funny yet eloquent and it really puts a new “face” to India: the country’s soft power. Indian culture - everything ranging from Bollywood and soap operas to it’s cuisine, yoga, tech and software genius, the magic of the “IITs” and ultimately, India’s democratic values and history of pluralism is what is defining the country around the world - not just it’s economic miracle, or it’s poverty.

2. Chimamanda Adichie, on the danger of a “single story.”

Adichie is a Nigerian novelist, and I really want to read her books at some point. To quote her profile:

In Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun has helped inspire new, cross-generational communication about the Biafran war. In this and in her other works, she seeks to instill dignity into the finest details of each character, whether poor, middle class or rich, exposing along the way the deep scars of colonialism in the African landscape.

Adichie’s newest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, is a brilliant collection of stories about Nigerians struggling to cope with a corrupted context in their home country, and about the Nigerian immigrant experience.

This talk is absolutely brilliant, talking about how assuming a “single story” of Africa - that it is a continent of poverty, war, and disease full of people needing to be “saved” by the kind White man - is so misleading. True, there is poverty and war in Africa, but this is only part of the story; stereotypes are not necessarily wrong but they are incomplete. By getting to understand all the stories behind a country, a continent, or a people, we gain a true appreciation of them and acknowledge our common humanity. One of the most brilliant talks I’ve seen and I’ve totally quoted it in fellowship applications already… Enjoy!

In “Our Turn to Eat,” Michaela Wrong writes about Kenya:

Kenya’s foreign partners failed to grasp that a system of rule based on the ‘Our Turn to Eat’ principle was explicitly designed to prevent the trickle-down upon which they counted for progress. The better Kenya’s economy fared, the more unstable the country actually became, because public awareness of inequality - sociologists call the phenomenon ‘invidious comparison’ - deepened a notch.

It was a poor bet for the donors to make, for nothing sabotages development programmes more dramatically than violence. Decades of work on school-building, AIDS prevention and gender-awareness-raising are wiped out in a moment when the first shamba goes up in flames and its terrified family hits the road. Convinced they grasped the big picture, the donors somehow managed to miss the approaching near-collapse of an African state.

And:

As for the Western tendency to turn a blind eye to blatant graft and routine human rights abuse in the eagerness to save ‘the poorest of the poor’, it is a feature of donor relations across the continent.

And finally:

If they only set foot on the continent, idealistic Westerners would be astonished to hear how often, and how fiercely, politically engaged Africans…call for aid to be cut, conditionalities sharpened. Kenyan journalist Kwanchetsi Makokha is not alone in detecting an incipient racism, rather than altruism, in our lack of discrimination. ‘Fundamentally the West doesn’t care enough about Africa to pay too much attention to how its money is spent. It wants to be seen to do the right thing, and that’s as far as the interest goes.’

While I haven’t had the chance to read the whole book yet, I’ve read a few chapters through one of my classes. I find her quotes fascinating - that donors and aid agencies are so focused on helping the poor that sometimes they forget to think about the broader context in which their work is operating. It seems to me that donors are generally less willing to support more “abstract” projects such as human rights monitoring or anti-corruption initiatives, because they want “direct” results and want their money to directly go to the poor through education, healthcare, microfinance loans, etc. But being aware of this broader context is, as Wrong indicates, absolutely vital if genuine change is going to occur. The ultimate goal of NGOs should not be simply to provide aid but also to contribute to the creation of a capable, efficient state that itself can provide these public goods to its people.

This definitely requires a more holistic outlook, taking into account human rights violations and corruption as part of the context in which people live. There is a problem today where “human rights” and “development” are looked at as two separate areas. But they really need to be integrated in order to generate the best outcomes.

Also, I find it interesting that she (like Dambisa Moyo) is pushing for increased governance conditionalities, and for aid to be cut until governments change their corrupt practices. I definitely see the value in governance conditionalities but would shy away from advocating a complete cut in aid. I like Kristof’s balanced take on the issue, where he emphasizes that aid has its shortcomings but has also seen some successes. We need to find a middle ground between aid and trade (or some way to include both), and perhaps one way to do so is to begin with governance conditionalities.

**Please forgive me for interrupting the Be the Change series — back to your regularly scheduled programming soon!

I’m taking an absolutely amazing class right now about Sudan, human rights, and US foreign policy. It has been so illuminating and challenging - it’s actually taught by the former Special Envoy, which is pretty amazing (sometimes I love Northwestern!). We’re reading amazing books, like Emma’s War which really traces the history of the Sudanese civil war beforehand, as well as talks about the moral difficulties encountered with humanitarian aid. I also am reading Darfur: A new history of a long war by the experts Julie Flint and Alex de Waal. We also have books by Paul Rusesabagina and Halima Bashir scheduled. Any activist needs to get ahold of these books. This is the kind of class that makes college worth it.

Truth be told, I barely understood the intricacies and nuances of what was going on in the region before I took the class (not that I understand it completely now, since I’m no expert on the topic, but I do have a much better sense). I mostly knew what was spewed out by Western media and by NGOs like Save Darfur – which is not really that illuminating, to be honest. I think it really speaks to how problematic Save Darfur and other advocacy groups like the Enough Project have been. If you think about it, Darfur is so well known that the conflict is now practically a household name in the US (not in a good way, of course), but how many of you can really tell me about the history of Darfur, and what’s happening there? The advocacy movement has been so successful at getting people to have a basic awareness of the issue — but that’s it. It stops there. It’s a basic understanding, not a deep one. I feel the issues in the region are so complex (and reading all these books has really drilled that into my mind - how Sudan is a place of so many divisions not simply based on ethnicity and religion, but also on economic development, presence of natural resources, culture, tribe and clan, and so much more.)  that it’s hard for any advocacy group to actually get people to understand that.

What worries me more, though, after thinking about is whether the movement for Darfur has done any good. What’s come out of it? Sure, the Obama administration has issued it’s new Sudan policy, but it seems like Obama thus far is doing even less than Bush had done (um, makes me wonder about the whole ‘Peace Prize’ thing)! The Bush administration actually had successful Darfur foreign policy - they played a primary role in negotiating the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the North and the South. I am doubtful about what’s going to happen with the Obama administration, but thus far Obama hasn’t proven foreign policy to be his strong point. Basically, it’s extremely difficult to change policy. I am also concerned because this is a movement for Sudan from America…not Sudan. Do we, as Americans, understand the best solutions to this conflict? Are we consulting with Sudanese people or at least, African people who know about the issue? So much money and effort and time has been generated for this cause. Has it been an effective movement? If not, what can be done better?

I’m also concerned about the 2011 referendum that’s coming up, where the South can vote to secede from Sudan altogether. Uh, considering the current government in Khartoum, I’m pretty sure the South’s going to want to secede. But it’s not all fun and games from here on out. The truth is, the South is pretty brutally divided amongst various groups as well. The SPLA often doesn’t have the full support of the South, and there have been horrific divisions and conflicts between various Southern tribes  (Nuer, Dinka, etc). Moreover, Khartoum definitely won’t be giving up the regions - many of them in the South or around the North/South border - because of significant oil in those areas. I was really happy to see, that in Obama’s Sudan policy there has been increased focus on mending the North-South divide. I really think that at all costs, civil war has to be prevented in the area — otherwise the referendum could incite horrific violence again. Read this good quote, from the awesome, new War and Peace blog on Change.org:

“The central regions located between the north and south including Abyei, Southern Kordofan, and the Blue Nile are still unstable while resting on disputed oil fields. And the minority tribes allegedly allied to the north who live in the south still tend to hold vendettas against their southern-allied neighbors, this is within Malakal, Jonglei, and elsewhere. So if, hypothetically, the south becomes independent, the defining of the border and oil field divisions will be an extremely delicate, if not bloody decades-long process. “

These are just a few of my rambling thoughts on the issue. Ultimately, I’m just wondering whether the activist movement has been effective at all. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around activism and lobbying — it totally scares me that despite SO much popular mobilization, the result might not be effective. But ultimately what the U.S. does IS going to be extremely significant. Our stance on foreign policy towards Darfur can definitely solve the crisis.

The question is: what’s our stance? And how can the activist movement be more effective in getting the U.S. to take the best possible stance and actions to deal with the conflict? No doubt, it’s a hard question, but it’s one we have to think critically about if change is going to occur.

Oh, and just for laughs, check this out. Al-Bashir himself has gotten social media savvy and set up his own website: Albashir.sd. What’s next, a blog?!

Here’s a horrifying article from The Guardian, discussing the spread of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army into Congo. Already 1,200 have been killed and more than 2,000 (about one-third children) have been kidnapped in the DRC in the past year. In one area of Congo, about 360,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. While the situation in Uganda is stabilizing, unfortunately the violence hasn’t truly stopped but has simply been displaced into the DRC. The article states:

In Congo, the confusion and anger is amplified. Father Benoit Kinalegu, the director of the Justice and Peace Commission in Dungu, said Kony was “not a human being”. “A human being can kill with reason, and an animal to eat. But Joseph Kony just kills people for nothing. The only way is take him out.”

Attempts are continuing. Officially, the Congolese army is leading the operation, with logistical support from UN peacekeepers. But it is the Ugandans who are doing most of the hunting. Despite claiming to have left behind only a few “intelligence squads” after Operation Lighting Thunder, interviews with analysts, aid workers, local officials and LRA victims suggest the number of Ugandan soldiers in the Congolese bush could exceed 3,000.

The situation seems to be devastating. I don’t want to go into the gory details of how the LRA is torturing, killing, and terrorizing the Congolese people - you can find that information in the article, and suffice it to say that it is horrifying.

It really disturbs me to hear this news, and realize that despite the efforts of the ICC, nothing has really changed. Sure, things haven’t exactly gotten worse, but the ICC’s warrant doesn’t seem to be deterring Kony one bit. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like he would have agreed to a peace treaty even without the warrant. Basically the situation is just as it was before - violent and relentless. What disturbs me is: what next? Do we just sit aside and hope that the relevant state actors and authorities are able to find and arrest Kony? Perhaps the ICC needs to assemble some sort of force imbued with the ability and authority to arrest war criminals. Honestly, at the pace things are going now, the violence will never end.

The truth is this conflict isn’t going to end unless Kony is arrested. So it’s clear he needs to be stopped. But what is being done to ensure that this is the case? And how much longer can this go on? I’m clearly not an expert on this, yet I find myself questioning the current approach. I just know that some action needs to be taken to halt this horrible violence. What do you think would be a good solution?

Photo credit: here