Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
10 August 2010 – The start of the trial of Omar Khadr – arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for crimes he allegedly committed as a child – before the United States Military Commission in Guantánamo Bay today could set a precedent jeopardizing the status of child soldiers around the world, a United Nations envoy cautioned.
Mr. Khadr, the last child soldier held in Guantánamo, was 15 years old when he allegedly threw a grenade that killed a US soldier. He faces war crimes charges at his trial.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, stressed in a statement that the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is clear that no one under the age of 18 should be tried for war crimes.
Paul Jay interviews Carol Rosenberg, a senior journalist, currently with the McClatchy News Service. Rosenberg works at the Miami Herald, which has provided extensive coverage of the operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
By Melina Milazzo Pennoyer Fellow, Law and Security Program
This week, the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) published a commentary entitled “Roles of CIA Physicians in Enhanced Interrogation and Torture of Detainees” by Leonard Rubenstein, JD and Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis, MD which examined the disturbing roles physicians played in both providing guidelines to interrogators as well as opinions to lawyers on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program.
OTTAWA — Canadian military commanders could not be successfully prosecuted under Canadian criminal law for “aiding and abetting” the torture of Afghan detainees unless it were proved they intentionally handed them over to Afghan custody to be mistreated, legal scholar Craig Forcese told the Military Police Complaints Commission Thursday…
The Speaker of the House, Peter Milliken, wisely urged that it is vital to de-escalate the crisis over access to documents on Afghan detainees. But Parliament must not settle for half-measures, writes Amir Attaran.
Michel Martin of National Public Radio spotlights UN efforts to combat rape as a tactic of warfare. She interviews Margot Wallstrom, the Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict–the first person to hold the position. “If we can ban cluster bombs, we can ban rape as a weapon of conflict.”
A United Nations expert body is urging broad support for the creation of a new global treaty to regulate the activities of private military and security contractors, stressing the need for strict control mechanisms for this “highly specific and dangerous trade.”
Convention on Cluster Munitions due to take effect on 1 August 2010
By ICBL | PRESS RELEASE
LONDON – Campaigners worldwide are stepping up pressure on governments to join the Convention on Cluster Munitions in the final 100 days before it becomes binding international law, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said today as it launched a countdown to 1 August, when the treaty enters into force.
When Wikileaks published the harrowing video of the deaths in Iraq of my colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, the world finally had the transparency it should have had about this tragedy.
It was impossible for me to watch and not feel outrage and great sorrow – but this is not about trying to tell anyone else what to feel. This is about trying to find out exactly what happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
What I want from the Pentagon – and from all militaries – is simple: acknowledgment, transparency, accountability.
Every time that I teach international criminal law, at least one student writes on whether you could prosecute the Burmese junta for crimes against humanity. As a matter of substantive ICL, the answer is clearly yes. The problem is jurisdictional — who is going to prosecute them? Apparently, the UK thinks it should be the ICC via a Security Council referral:
OTTAWA — The Canadian government asked the United States not to use shared evidence to prosecute Canadian Guantanamo inmate Omar Khadr. Canada’s Supreme Court ruled last month that Ottawa violated Khadr’s rights by sharing his statements to Canadian officials with Washington. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Ottawa delivered a diplomatic note to Washington “seeking assurances that any evidence or statements shared with US authorities as a result of the interviews of Mr. Khadr by Canadian agents and officials in 2003 and 2004 not be used against him by US authorities in the context of proceedings before the (US) Military Commission or elsewhere.”
During the question and answer session at an excellent conference underway Georgetown University Law Center, I asked Judge Richard Goldstone his reaction to the General Assembly vote on his Gaza Report that took place on Friday. The resolution — which passed 98 to 8 with 33 abstentions — gave both sides to the conflict five months to implement credible accountability mechanisms for alleged war crimes. A similar vote occurred at the General Assembly in November, which also passed, though with a greater number of “no” votes and abstentions.
Goldstone cited the difference in the vote count, noting that none of the 27 members of the European Union voted “no” this time around. The only “no” votes were from Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the United States…
A bipartisan slate of U.S. Congress members urged the Obama administration to keep the Goldstone report from advancing to the International Court of Justice.
The U.N. General Assembly is poised to refer to the report, which accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes in last winter’s Gaza war, to the United Nations Security Council. The council is the only body able to refer the report to the court.
“We know you share our concerns about an anticipated U.N. General Assembly resolution that is expected to refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council, and ultimately to the International Court of Justice,” said the letter signed by 95 members of the House of Representatives and sent Thursday to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “This is an extremely troubling development that threatens to undermine the renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at a critical time, and is counterproductive to our foreign policy goals.
Eleven years after the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty became binding international law, activists worldwide are stepping up their call on the United States to join.
By press release
The U.S. announced last November that it had initiated a review of its landmine policy. Members of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) are visiting dozens of U.S. embassies worldwide on the 1 March anniversary to urge the U.S. to decide to join the Ottawa Treaty without further delay.
“We are glad that the U.S. has decided to take a fresh look at its stance on banning antipersonnel mines,” said Sylvie Brigot, Executive Director of the ICBL. “During the policy review process, it is crucial that decision-makers listen to the voices of landmine survivors and mine-affected communities.”
This research was last updated on February 25, 2010. For a full analysis of the repercussions and results of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, please click here for “The Year of the Drone,” by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, February 24, 2010.
The research on these pages… draws only on accounts from reliable media organizations with deep reporting capabilities in Pakistan, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks—the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC—and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan—the Daily Times, Dawn, and the News—as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network.
Our study shows that the 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, including 18 in 2010, from 2004 to the present have killed approximately between 834 and 1,216 individuals, of whom around 549 to 849 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 percent.
Is this really the state of ethics in the American legal profession? Government lawyers who abused their offices to give the president license to get away with torture did nothing that merits a review by the bar?
A five-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s ethics watchdogs recommended a disciplinary review for the two lawyers who produced the infamous torture memos for former President George W. Bush, but they were overruled by a more senior Justice Department official.
A senior United Nations human rights official today called on international troops fighting militants in Afghanistan to follow directives designed to guard against civilian deaths, drawing particular attention to the plight of children caught up in the conflict.
Last year, some 346 children were killed by warring factions in Afghanistan, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy told reporters in Kabul…
Ms. Coomaraswamy noted a “major change in attitude and tactics” on the part of the military since her last visit in July 2008, but stressed that “these ideas and directives have now to be implemented.”
LONDON – Burkina Faso and Moldova ratified the international Convention banning cluster munitions today, bringing the total number of ratifications to 30 and triggering entry into force on 1 August 2010, when the Convention will become binding international law.
“The first 30 states to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions should be proud of their central role in helping to put an end for all time to the suffering caused by these cruel and unjust weapons,” said Thomas Nash, Coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). “For those not yet on board the Convention, 2010 is the year to get on the right side of history, to get in on the ground floor, and join the ban before the First Meeting of States Parties in November.” (read more…)
LONDON – Denmark ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 February, taking its place among the visionary group of nations that will soon trigger entry into force of the most significant disarmament and humanitarian treaty in over a decade, the Cluster Munition Coalition said today.
BARDO – The Chamber of Deputies adopted, on Tuesday morning, during a plenary session held under the chairmanship of Speaker Foued Mebazaa, with attendance of some government members, a draft law providing for the ratification of the Cluster Munitions Convention.
