Professors Support Establishment of International Criminal Court
On the eve of the new year last December, then-president Bill Clinton squeaked under a deadline to sign a treaty to establish a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). The treaty had been created in Rome nearly three years before, and the court it describes would try individuals for serious offenses of global concern, such as genocide and war crimes, much like the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of post-World War II. Unlike current ad hoc tribunals that deal with alleged abuses in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the ICC would be a permanent forum. Some argue that such a court would benefit human rights while others say the treaty, as written, would be ineffective.
Stephen Marks, director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, and Jennifer Leaning, professor in the Department of Population and International Health, and director of the Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights Program at the FXB Center, support the ICC and the ratification of the treaty.
"People
working on issues of accountability and responsibility for massive violation
of human rights and humanitarian law would agree that the United States
should remain in a position to influence the process of the ICC,"
said Marks.
With the ICC, establishing humanitarian guidelines and regulations would help to identify a command of responsibilities within militaries, "so there is a clear sense of right and wrong, and even at the lowest ranks, you are not immune from prosecution if you have followed an unlawful order," said Leaning.
But why is the establishment of the ICC a public health issue? "In general, the mainstream public health professional has not looked at war as a major assault on population," said Leaning. "Over the last 10 years that has changed."
She cited the ICC as a body that, "will contain, constrict, confine, and regulate the ways in which morbidity and mortality are imposed by war."
Added Marks, the ICC, "seeks to reduce extreme harm to the public in both international war situations and civil war situations."
The
establishment of a permanent international court system has been a long
time coming. An international human rights movement grew out of World
War II, but the ability to prosecute individual leaders or other officials
of abusive regimes was not conceivable until after the Cold War ended.
Modern global communication, such as international news coverage and the Internet, increased the public's awareness of human rights issues by graphically depicting war. Human rights advocates called for a system that could cover more situations than temporary ad hoc bodies and deter dictators and torturers.
According to Leaning, the ICC safeguards states' interests while providing a forum where individuals can be held accountable for breaching human rights agreements such as the Geneva Conventions and other texts.
"This is an example of how public health and human rights efforts join forces to limit the morbidity and mortality associated with war. That is extremely significant to what we are all about at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights," added Marks.
Nearly 140 countries have signed the treaty, including the United States,
but according to the rules of the United Nations, 60 countries must ratify
the document to establish the court. Twenty-nine have ratified the treaty,
and the Bush administration will now need to decide if the United States
will join them. Experts expect the treaty will be ratified with or without
US support. If created, the court will be located in The Hague, Netherlands.
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For more information, visit the United Nations' page at www.UN.org/law or the NGO organization Coalition for an ICC at www.iccnow.org. To read more about the research of Marks and Leaning, look for: Stephen Marks: Chapter in The Hissène Habré Case: The Law and Politics of Universal Jurisdiction. Princeton University Press. Due 2001. Jennifer Leaning: Contributor to "Medicine and International Humanitarian Law: Law Provides Norms that Must Guide Doctors in War and Peace" [ed]. British Medical Journal, 319 (7207): 393-4, August 14, 1999. |
