Les limites de la « dissuasion » en droit pénal national et international

Payam Akhavan, dans son article « Beyond Impunity: Can International Justice Prevent Future Atrocities »[1], s’interroge sur la façon dont la justice pénale peut prévenir la perpétration de crimes de guerre et de crimes contre l’humanité ou empêcher leur répétition[2]. Il estime entre autres que la crainte de représailles – qu’il s’agisse de mesures judiciaires ou de sanctions politiques – peut finir par dissuader certains acteurs de commettre des atrocités.

Il va sans dire que cet argument s’applique aux hommes d’État et leaders politiques. D’une part, la création de tribunaux spéciaux en ex-Yougoslavie (TPIY) et au Rwanda (TPIR) et les emprisonnements qui ont suivi ont contribué à miner la culture d’impunité qui régnait jadis chez certains hommes politiques assoiffés de pouvoir. D’autre part, comme l’ont démontré les succès électoraux de Vojislav Koštunica en Serbie et de Stjepan Mesic en Croatie lors des années 1990, il n’est désormais plus rentable sur les plans politique et économique d’être associé aux anciens leaders accusés ou condamnés pour crimes commis en temps de guerre[3]. En effet, malgré la pression de certaines franges endoctrinées souhaitant la réhabilitation d’anciens « héros » ultranationalistes, la crainte d’être isolé à l’échelle internationale suffit souvent à convaincre les leaders politiques de quitter les marges et de reconnaître la compétence des institutions judiciaires internationales telles que le TPIY et, plus récemment, la Cour pénale internationale (CPI).

Or, Akhavan…

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Ecuador opens its borders to universal citizenship: a step forward on the way to equality of peoples?

In principle, open borders might tend toward the respect of international equality; but in practice it does not necessarily provide more equality for vulnerable populations. It can actually enable profiteers to benefit from less supervised borders and trick desperate people into leaving their home for the American dream. Opening borders may not be enough: if an immigrant finds himself inside the country but excluded from the local community, like those who do not have papers in Ecuador, he may not be illegal but he is not legal either. Future experiences of open-borders may be more positive, who knows; but the Ecuadorian situation can hardly be called a success.[i]

Borders are quite representative of the current state of international affairs: each state, as the supreme authority, decides who comes in and who gets to stay on its territory. Some countries are lucky, like Canada: being very attractive to most, Canada can pick and choose as it pleases. For immigrants, coming to Canada generally means an important improvement of living conditions and revenue. Thus, Canada has strict immigration policies that allow it to discriminate against immigrants that may not be as “desirable” for the Canadian society.

Now this raises the question: are borders and discriminatory immigration legitimate? Is it possible to administrate a country without borders? Does international equality require open borders? If a country suddenly changes its policy and opens…

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UN blacklist a stain on international justice

Abousfian Abdelrazik has overcome another hurdle in his long struggle for justice.

On November 30, the Montreal resident was finally removed from the United Nations Security Council 1267 List. The blacklist imposes an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on alleged associates of Al Qaida and the Taliban.

But despite his new freedom, Abdelrazik’s fight is far from over.

Still outstanding are a $27-million lawsuit against the Canadian government, a constitutional challenge to the legislation implementing the 1267 list sanctions, and an apology from the Canadian government for its role in Abdelrazik’s almost decade-long saga that could have been written by Kafka.

Arriving in Canada as a refugee, Abdelrazik was given Canadian citizenship in 1995. He returned to Sudan, where he is a dual citizen, to visit his sick mother in 2003. There he was arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. He was never charged with any crime and was eventually cleared by both the Sudanese government and Canada’s RCMP and CSIS of any criminal wrongdoing.

However the Canadian government refused to issue Abdelrazik a passport to return to Canada, using the 1267 List as an excuse. Abdelrazik’s name had been added to the list in 2006 at the request of the United States.

Abdelrazik spent the next 14 months sleeping on a cot in the Canadian embassy. Finally in 2009, Federal Court of Canada judge Russel…

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Netzai Sandoval, un jeune avocat mexicain, se lance contre Goliath

Un avocat de 28 ans, Netzai Sandoval, a déposé le 25 novembre une plainte à la Cour pénale internationale contre des membres du gouvernement mexicain ainsi que des cartels de la drogue. En 8 mois de travail, il a amassé de la preuve sur 470 violations du droit international, montant un dossier de 700 pages. Il a reçu les signatures de 23 000 citoyens  mexicains pour appuyer sa plainte, ce nombre ayant aujourd’hui augmenté à 27 000. Toute l’information sur la plainte est disponible sur leur blogue.

Les plaintes déposées à la CPI proviennent généralement d’États. L’avocat a ainsi présenté une plainte avec l’objectif que Luis Moreno Ocampo, le Procureur en chef de la CPI, ouvre une enquête selon son pouvoir discrétionnaire de le faire (art. 15 du Statut de Rome). Le Procureur devra donc évaluer le sérieux de la preuve, et s’il est d’avis qu’il dispose de bases raisonnables pour ouvrir l’enquête, il devra demander une autorisation de la Chambre préliminaire. Celle-ci se prononcera également sur la base raisonnable de la demande.

Les violations auxquelles il réfère sont traduites par Global Voices, un blogue francophone : « Nous réclamons que la Cour enquête sur les disparitions, le recrutement d’enfants de moins de 15 ans, sur les exécutions sommaires opérées par des soldats, sur la mutilation en tant que forme d’intimidation, sur les attaques perpétrées contre la population civile, sur les déplacements…

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Review of Dennis Edney’s Lecture: “The Rule of Law in an Age of Terror”

“Human rights have a dysfunctional relationship with justice. The language is certainly beautiful, but it’s all dressed up with nowhere to go,” charged Dennis Edney in a scathing lecture at the Faculty of Law at UBC on September 15.

Edney worked from 2004 to 2011 on Omar Khadr’s defence against charges stemming from the July 2002 firefight death of a US soldier. Khadr, who is Canadian, was 15 at the time. American forces interrogated him for three months in the US-operated Bagram Theatre Detention Facility in Afghanistan, before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay, where he remains. In 2005, Khadr’s chief interrogator from Bagram, US Sergeant Joshua Claus, was found guilty of offences relating to the routine torture and homicide of Bagram prisoners. Claus received a five-month prison sentence. He testified at Khadr’s military trial in 2010.

In April 2009, the Federal Court ruled that Canada was complicit in the US’s torture of Khadr and ordered Ottawa to seek his repatriation. The Federal Court of Appeal concurred, but the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that though Canada was violating Khadr’s human rights, it was not obliged to seek his repatriation.

In October 2010, after insisting on his innocence for years, Khadr pled guilty in a military trial to terrorism-related offences, in exchange for a promise from Canada to repatriate him by October 2011 to serve the rest of his prison sentence in…

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L’accès aux médicaments antirétroviraux en contexte de crise de la santé publique et les obstacles posés par le droit international de la propriété intellectuelle

Chaque année, près de 2,7 millions de nouvelles infections au virus de l’immunodéficience humaine (VIH) sont rapportées et près de 2 millions de personnes en meurent (1). Les experts observent toutefois que les pics des nouvelles infections et de la mortalité annuelle sont maintenant derrière nous (1) et que les chiffres montrent une diminution globale de l’incidence du VIH/sida au niveau mondial (2). Un plus grand accès aux médicaments antirétroviraux (ARV) et une baisse de leur prix en faveur des populations des pays en développement (PED) est en grande partie responsable des progrès récents. Les ARV, en plus d’être les médicaments préconisés par les médecins  partout dans le monde pour un traitement efficace de la maladie, jouent un important rôle préventif en diminuant notablement les probabilités de transmission du virus (2, 3).

L’accès aux ARV est donc capital pour les PED, dont les populations ont les plus hauts taux d’incidence (4). Il y a près de dix ans, les ARV n’étaient que peu ou pas accessibles aux victimes de la maladie dans les PED, coûtant près de 10 000 $ par année pour chaque patient (5, 6). La société civile ainsi que certains membres de la communauté médicale internationale, outrés par l’attitude des grandes compagnies pharmaceutiques[1], ont donc dû prendre les choses en main afin de modifier l’ordre du jour politique global et  réitérer l’importance d’agir contre les ravages que…

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“Mapiripán Massacre Scandal” Affair

A scandal happened recently relating to an Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) case, raising interesting issues of lawyers’ ethics, among others. Here is a summary of the facts drafted by Lawyers Without Borders Canada (LWBC), coming from the statement they have made concerning the recent events.

“A recent testimony of Ms. Mariela Contreras is at the root of the present affair. Ms. Contreras declared before the Colombian justice system in 2002, and before the Inter- American Court on Human Rights (IACHR), in 2005, that she had lost her husband and two sons in the massacre perpetrated by paramilitaries in July 1997 in the village of Mapiripán, with the complicity of regular military forces. On October 25th, 2011, she testified at Court that she had in fact lied and fraudulently benefited from the monetary compensation paid by the Colombian State as a result of the historical ruling in this case.”[i]

LWBC has not been personally involved in the case, so critics were not aimed at the organization in particular. LWBC is however closely linked to the Colectivo de abogados « José Alvéar Restrepo » (CAJAR), with whom they are partners in several projects. CAJAR is a Colombian human rights law firm, and they were representing some victims in the Mapiripan case in front of the IACHR, Ms. Mariela Contreras being one of those alleged victims. LWBC has thus expressed…

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Is the Pedestal-ing of the “Rule of Law” Cause for Concern?

The “rule of law” has been put on a pedestal in international political and development discourse. No other “idea” (I am not quite sure what it is) shares its privileged place in our legal imagination. No other idea, Brian Tamanaha says, has achieved such a “global endorsement”.[1] Thomas Carothers laments that:

One cannot get through a foreign policy debate these days without someone proposing the rule of law as a solution to the world’s troubles.[2]

More mental energies need be expended to put the “rule of law” in its place. Internal tensions and ignored controversies need to be better exposed. To begin, we should adopt the most formal, ‘thinnest’ understanding of the rule of law: that laws ought to be prescribed, forward looking, written and made public, relatively clear, non-conflicting, and that adjudicative forums ought to be accessible and impartial.

Understood that way, the ‘rule of law’ is an end-point. It is not a contained principle but a set of general prescriptions that are desirable because of what they do and afford to legal subjects. A legal system that adheres to formal rule of law prescriptions affords individuals the ability to make proper self-regarding decisions, because the consequences of potential courses of action are more ascertainable. Firms don’t make hallowed “life choices”, but that same certainty and stability may induce firms to invest or transact where…

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Israel’s other refugee question

This past August, visiting Israel for the first time and staying with a friend in south Tel Aviv, I was immediately struck by the number of African faces I saw in her neighbourhood. These Africans, I was informed, were migrants mostly from Eritrea, Darfur, and Southern Sudan (now the Republic of South Sudan) who were seeking protection in Israel under the 1951 Refugee Convention. You see, until that point, my knowledge of Israel’s refugee issues extended only to the question of the right of return of the Palestinians expelled in 1948 and their descendants. As a “final status” issue in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and one that cuts to the core of the national identities of both factions, it is easy to understand how this new class of African refugees can escape the attention of human rights lawyers and advocates abroad.

I was in Israel taking part in a program on law and internal diversity, a partnership of McGill and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, so thankfully I was able to explore Israel’s refugee policies in greater detail in a course on migration and diversity. For conceptual clarity, an asylum seekers is a person who is making a claim under the Refugee Convention and and a refugee is one whose claim has been accepted by the receiving country. It is notoriously difficult to collect statistics on migration flows,…

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Bush, torture, and politics trumping law

Human rights and anti-war activists greeted former U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to British Columbia last month with calls for his arrest. The demonstrators correctly asserted that Canada has a responsibility to investigate Bush for his role in the torture of detainees in U.S. custody.

A visit by former Vice President Dick Cheney in September received a similar welcome, as have other visits by Bush administration officials. Already in 2004, a group called Lawyers Against the War tried to bring torture charges against Bush by filing criminal charges.

The number of voices calling for investigation and prosecution is growing and now includes several mainstream human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. On the political stage, federal NDP Immigration critic Don Davis urged the government to deny Cheney entry into Canada.

The evidence against Bush and Cheney also continues to mount. The Canadian Centre for International Justice teamed up with the New York based Center for Constitutional Rights to file a 70-page draft indictment against Bush ahead of his visit to Canada. The indictment was accompanied by 4000 pages of evidence that described the U.S. program of extraordinary rendition, the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and secret CIA detention sites.

Bush himself has on various occasions admitted to authorizing torture techniques, such as waterboarding. In an interview with American journalist Matt Lauer, Bush claimed…

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