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 ne limite pas son argument aux leaders politiques. Il prétend que même les seigneurs de guerre somaliens ou afghans ne peuvent plus être indifférents envers le lien entre l’acceptation internationale et leur survie[4]. Pourtant, l’isolation internationale et les représailles telles que la « guerre contre le terrorisme » ne semblent pas empêcher plusieurs seigneurs de guerre afghans d’agir en parfaite violation des principes les plus élémentaires du droit international. Au contraire, l’absence de justice pénale et les opérations militaires exécutées par l’OTAN semblent plutôt avoir pour effet d’exacerber les tensions et de motiver davantage les groupes terroristes et seigneurs de guerre dans leurs actions contre l’hégémonie occidentale.

Dans le même ordre d’idées, il semble également que le caractère « dissuasif » de la responsabilité criminelle individuelle soit inexorablement lié au degré de contrôle de l’État central. En effet, l’arrestation et la comparution des criminels de guerre se font beaucoup plus difficilement dans les pays où le contrôle de l’État central est affaibli, comme en Afghanistan, ou carrément inexistant, comme en Somalie. Dans ces pays, et dans plusieurs autres, de nombreux criminels de guerre pavoisent en toute impunité, à l’abri de la justice tant nationale qu’internationale. Pourtant, l’un des objectifs fixés par le Statut de Rome établissant la CPI est de suppléer les cours nationales lorsque celles-ci n’ont pas la volonté ou les ressources nécessaires pour poursuivre et juger les crimes les plus graves (art. 17)[5]. Il va donc sans dire que l’aspect « dissuasif » de la justice pénale internationale est beaucoup plus limité dans ces pays où la justice nationale est restreinte et où la justice internationale – qu’il s’agisse de tribunaux spéciaux ou de la CPI – est absente.

Finalement, une autre limite à l’argument de la « dissuasion » pourrait être soulevée : de nombreux pays refusent toujours de ratifier le Statut de Rome et d’ainsi reconnaître la compétence de la CPI. Parmi ceux-ci se trouvent des puissances internationales telles que les États-Unis, la Chine, la Russie et Israël. Malgré leur statut politico-économique, il devient plus difficile pour ces pays de se servir d’institutions judiciaires internationales pour inciter certains acteurs internationaux à respecter le droit international lorsqu’eux-mêmes refusent d’être soumis à la compétence de la plus importante cour de justice pénale internationale.

[2] Ibid., p. 12.

[3] Ibid., p. 14.

[4] Ibid., p. 12.

[5] Art. 17, Statut de Rome.

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 forcés, sur le viol des femmes et des filles, sur les actes de torture perpétrés et tolérés par l’Armée, sur les attaques ciblant les centres de désintoxication et sur l’enlèvement, la vente et l’asservissement des migrants par les autorités mexicaines des services de l’immigration. »

L’avocat souhaiterait que ces violations soient reconnues comme crimes de guerre ainsi que crimes contre l’humanité. La catégorisation de crimes de guerre est intéressante juridiquement, considérant que le Mexique n’apparait pas nécessairement comme un pays en proie à un conflit armé. Quoiqu’à l’heure de la « guerre internationale contre le terrorisme », pourquoi pas la guerre contre les cartels de la drogue ? C’est déjà plus limité géographiquement. Les cartels de la drogue seraient donc des groupes armés reconnus comme parties au conflit, quoiqu’ils n’aient aucune autre ambition que de poursuivre impunément leur trafic de stupéfiants? À premier abord, on pourrait penser qu’il s’agit plutôt de « law enforcement » que d’un conflit armé. Cela soulève des questions intéressantes.

La qualification de crimes contre l’humanité semble à première vue plus adéquate pour traiter de la question : les crimes doivent s’inscrire « dans le cadre d’une attaque généralisée ou systématique lancée contre toute population civile » (art 7 du Statut de Rome). Les crimes contre l’humanité semblent être plus précisément l’utilisation généralisée de torture, esclavage, disparitions forcées, meurtre, viol, esclavage sexuel et prostitution forcée; et ce dans le cadre de la lutte contre les narcotrafiquants.

La Cour suprême du Mexique a été sollicitée le 25 mai 2011 afin qu’elle use de son pouvoir d’enquête sur ces violations massives des droits de la personne, mais elle n’a encore pas pris position. Le Mexique n’a d’ailleurs pas adopté de loi pour mettre en œuvre le droit international contre les crimes de guerre et les crimes contre l’humanité. Netzai Sandoval fait également valoir que les organes judiciaires mexicains ne sont pas en mesure de juger ces violations, ceux-ci n’étant pas assez indépendants pour mener un véritable procès sur de hauts-fonctionnaires.

La plainte vise Felipe Calderón, le Président mexicain, ainsi que  Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, l’homme le plus puissant des cartels de la drogue au Mexique, mais également le cabinet de sécurité fédéral ainsi que les cartels de la drogue eux-mêmes. Il s’agit ainsi d’un autre aspect intéressant : il s’attaque à un chef d’État au pouvoir actuellement, ce qui cause toujours beaucoup d’émoi, ainsi qu’à un des plus puissants membres du crime organisé au monde.

David contre Goliath?

“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 solidarity to their partners, especially considering the apparent unfairness of the critics.

It is very important to mention that there is no doubt about the actual events of the “Mapiripan Massacre” and the involvement of the Colombian government.[ii]

Some Colombian officials are criticising CAJAR for having represented the false victim. Now this raises the question, does a lawyer have to be 100% sure of the version of his/her client when representing them? Can he/she ever actually be sure? What means could possibly be reasonably expected from a lawyer to confirm the facts?

On the bases of these critics, Colombian officials are asking for punitive sanctions to be imposed on CAJAR.

This is interesting, considering that even before CAJAR started representing Ms. Mariela Contreras (2003), the Office of the Attorney General for Columbia had already recognised her as a victim of the massacre. One could think the Office has a much heavier responsibility – and the according means – to verify facts than the victims’ lawyer. One would not necessarily think lawyers hire investigators to verify every mandate they are given.

What should be inferred from this insistence on punishing the human rights lawyers by members of the Colombian government? It can hardly be seen as protecting human rights lawyers and allowing them to do their work.

The other problematic aspect is the damage it could do to the IACHR ant the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights’ images. After all, they are the organisms bearing the burden on deciding on the facts and ordering compensations. The task of determining precisely who the victims are should not be underestimated, and the credibility of the institutions must be preserved.

The IACHR has called the parties to a special audience in San Jose to try to establish responsibilities on the 23^rd of November. The Colombian government started presenting evidence relating to the false testimonies, intending to prove it has paid compensation to false victims. The audience is closed to the public. [iii]

It will be interesting to follow the IACHR’s decision on the matter.

[ii] Center for Justice and International Law, Statement on the Mapiripan vs. Columbia Case, 1 November 2011. Electronic resource : http://cejil.org/en/comunicados/center-justice-and-international-law-issues-statement-mapiripan-v-colombia-case

[iii] Elespectador.com, Mapiripan, al Banquillo, 22 November 2011. Electronic Resource: http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/judicial/articulo-312796-mapiripan-al-banquillo

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, which are extremely fluid, but the number of asylum-seekers may range from around17,000 to over 30,000, mostly from the African countries mentioned above.¹ The number of refugees recognized under the Convention by Israel since ratification in 1954? One-hundred and seventy (170). The bulk of these asylum seekers began to arrive in 2005 and although many have since left the country, there are still thousands who remain with precarious status in Israel.

These asylum seekers arrive in Israel by way of a treacherous journey through the Sinai desert and across the Egyptian border, but this is hardly the last barrier they face. Some are immediately sent back to Egypt (so-called “hot returns”), in violation of the peremptory norm of non-refoulement which intends to prevent refugees from being returned to the site of their persecution. This is particularly egregious as the abuse of these migrants by Egyptian authorities is well documented; last spring a principled company of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers serving on the border refused to carry out the return of African refugees as they knew the Egyptian border police routinely shot at, sexually assaulted, and even murdered these migrants.

Provided they pass the border successfully, there is still the threat of detention: as of 2009, two thousand asylum seekers were detained in Israeli prisons for indeterminate periods of time, even as unaccompanied minors.² The government distinguishes between those asylum seekers who have contacted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to file a petition and those who are apprehended before doing do — the latter are arrested, detained indefinitely, and are eligible for deportation. This places those who arrive at the border and make a claim for refugee status at a disadvantage to those who are able to evade the authorities until they reach Tel Aviv to make a claim with the Commissioner.³

Israel began to assume control over its refugee status determination (RSD) from the UNHCR in 2002 and it now has full control over the system. This process is problematic as the country has no refugee law: asylum seekers have effectively no right representation, appeals must be made to the body responsible for the first decision, and issues of standards obviously arise in attempting to coordinate efforts amongst two bodies with divergent institutional interests.⁴ Asylum seekers’ rights to earn a livelihood and to move freely around the country are restricted: the conditional release documents given to the vast majority do not permit them to work and they often restrict the holder from traveling to or living in key labour market areas.⁵ They are also excluded from receiving social assistance.

What’s more, many asylum seekers are stamped as enemy nationals automatically upon arrival. Last March the Israeli parliament passed a first reading of a bill to update an old emergency measure that the government is currently using to restrict migration flows. The Infiltration Prevention Bill would reaffirm a policy that allows the government to detain “infiltrators”, defined as citizens of an enemy country, for up to seven years; anyone caught with a weapon, even a knife, could face 20 years. The Sudanese government is hostile to Israel and is therefore an enemy country, like most Arab states and Iran. This means that all of its nationals are automatically deemed a security threat and this law could be used to prevent their recourse to flee from the conflict in the region. This is in clear contravention of Article 3 of the convention which forbids receiving countries to discriminate against applicants on the basis of race, religion, or country of origin. Furthermore, anyone who would assist asylum seekers in easing their stay in Israel would also be subject to the same maximum penalties of 20 years behind bars. This means that the dynamic and committed Israeli citizens we met on a field visit with the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv could be potential criminals, all for working to promote the human dignity of refugees and migrant workers.

While Israel has ratified the Refugee Convention, it has not implemented it into its domestic law. Still, the country’s supreme court has affirmed has accepted the Convention as an interpretive guide and in El-Tai’i v. Minister of Interior the court affirmed that the principle of non-refoulement is binding.⁶ This case is yet another testament to the limits of international treaties and human rights standards. How Israel will deal with these asylum seekers is not a simple question of respect or non-respect of the Refugee Convention; the country has underlying identity issues that complicate matters greatly.

As Tally Kritzman-Amir of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute reminds us⁷, Israel is unlike many other democracies in that to protect the Jewish character of the state, its immigration regime grants citizenship only to Jews and their relatives. Demographics cause the country a great deal of anxiety; it has an interest in maintaining a population advantage over the 20% Arab minority. The reception of African refugees, particularly those from the Sudan who are mostly Muslim (apart from the South Sudanese Christian minority), cannot be assessed without regards to these ethno-religious overtones. Since immigration regimes are governed by the sovereign will of the state, the policy of Jewish return is not in question here. However, this prerogative cannot seep into Israel’s commitments to the international refugee regime if it is to remain an institution based on the principles of non-discrimination.

This influx of migrants is, without a doubt, a massive destabilizing agent in a country of seven million. Still, Israel is actually under no international legal obligation to naturalize these asylum-seekers and refugees; indeed, many of the 170 who obtained refugee status were resettled to other countries like Canada.⁸ The country must only make good on its commitments to international refugee law by giving asylum seekers, regardless of origin, a fair chance at RSD. Donors would jump at the opportunity to fund Israeli efforts to integrate and resettle refugees and display their commitment human rights. And it costs nothing to grant the thousands of asylum seekers in the country the right to work legally and with dignity while their cases are reviewed. Israel describes itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East” and in keeping with this, it should aspire to develop a more cosmopolitan refugee regime, not one that would marginalize some of the most vulnerable people under the banner of security and sovereignty.

We could wait for states to agree on ways to resolve these ambiguities and conflicting rules. But I won’t hold my breath.

While human rights activists and NGOs were initially hopeful that such a commission would play a role akin to that of the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Commission of South Africa, the result fell short of expectations.

The differences in the context in which the two commissions came into fruition are clear – one followed democratization of the country and the sweeping in of a new regime, and the other followed the annihilation of separatist forces and the ruling regime’s consolidation of power over the last bits of separatist-held territory. It is not surprising, given the context, that following the proceedings of the commission, Amnesty International released a scathing report on the LLRC in September.

Among its many contentions with the commission some of the more glaring are its “inadequate mandate, insufficient guarantees of independence, and lack of witness protection”. They note that the Commission is simply the latest of a long line of domestic investigations into human rights violations that, rather than work towards delivering any sense of restorative justice, was created to “deflect international pressure and silence internal critics”. A report by the UN Secretary General Panel of Experts in April came to similar conclusions, commenting on possible violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention among other violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and noting that  “the LLRC is deeply flawed, does not meet international standards for an effective accountability mechanism and, therefore, does not and cannot satisfy the joint commitment of the President of Sri Lanka and the Secretary-General to an accountability process.”

In her post last year on the efficacy of international criminal tribunals, Alexandra Dodger noted that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in its exercise, “offered new binding interpretations of the Geneva Conventions and other instruments of international humanitarian law” while setting a precedent for successor tribunals in other war torn countries. However, she suggested that alone such criminal tribunals “cannot restore a sense of unity or purpose to a divided country”.

In a country such as Sri Lanka however, while an international criminal tribunal may not be sufficient to bring about closure to a country still reeling from the effects of war, in such a context where the government has shown a disinterest in accountability or any genuine restorative justice for the victims of conflict (whether by the hands of government or separatist forces), such an instrument of justice, properly utilized, certainly is necessary for any meaningful reconciliation process to be realized.

There are disagreements on what the impacts of criminal prosecution of war criminals have on social reconstruction. While I think criminal prosecution can be helpful for achieving a social balance and helping the country build on that balance, I doubt that it is the case for the ICTR.

Since its creation, the ICTR has not made one indictment against the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the “winners” of the armed conflict in Rwanda. The RPF had been actively fighting the Hutu government a long time before the 1994 events, and  have been the government ever since winning the war and putting an end to the 1994 genocide.

Still, it has been widely reported that the RPF have also committed their share of international crimes. It is not to say that the ICTR prosecutors are partial and did not want to prosecute the RPF, to the contrary. Louise Arbour (second Chief Prosecutor) had expressed fear of sending investigators to Rwanda to investigate eventual RPF members, and Carla Del Ponte (third Chief Prosecutor) actually tried to fulfill investigations on RPF members. She eventually lost her position at the ICTR, mainly because of political pressure from the Rwandan government on the UN.

The Rwandan government has collaborated with the ICTR where it served its interests, and members of the government in function were in no way interested in going to the ICTR as accused. The problem is, no matter how fair the ICTR intended to be, the obstacles that Rwanda had the power to create could not be ignored. For instance, witnesses have to travel from Rwanda to Tanzania (the ICTR location), investigators have to go in the country without the fear of being arrested, and documents have to be shared. Trials at the ICTR without Rwanda’s collaboration simply cannot happen.

So the ICTR did what it could do: prosecute the losers. But what are the impacts of this? Is justice fulfilling half of its duty if it is prosecuting half of the criminals? Does it matter that only one side gets justice? Or rather, is it justice if only one side is prosecuted?

“Victors’ justice” is not a new issue; It has been extensively discussed over the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. The difference here is that the tribunal is not actually set up by Rwanda or its allies. It is set up by the international community, with judges and employees from all continents, who hopefully have no pre-conception of the events of 1994. This means that the ICTR gets the symbolic status of an independent and impartial judge over the events of 1994, and it is its role to determine the historical facts. But if only one side gets to present their version, then the justice process cannot be complete, the view given cannot be faithful to the events. We have learned by now that there is always another side to the story.

By condoning the victor’s version on the international scene, we recognise the status of victim to the Tutsi government. This is not to say Tutsis were not victims of a genocide, they surely were. But many victims of the events of 1994 were also Hutus, and some of them were victims of the RPF, and not the genocidaire Hutu government. But these victims have not been acknowledged, they have been categorised as part of the genocidaire ethnic group. In other words, the events of 1994 were far more complex than the ICTR indictments could lead us to believe.

Can this distorted version of reality help Rwandans rebuild their country, after going through such extreme violence? The 1994 events were no coincidence: they were the outbreak of decades of tension between Hutus and Tutsis, and probably months of planning on the part of the Hutu government. The victory of the RPF, a well organised and trained armed group hidden on the Rwandan borders before the events of 1994, reminds us that they too had been planning a war for a long time. Is it to say that now that the genocide has happened tensions have gone? The Tutsi government is holding the country in a tight grip, many activists have criticised it for systematic repression of freedom of expression and freedom of press. Tensions between Tutsis and Hutus are still strong in the region of the Great Lakes, especially in Democratic Republic of Congo (RDC). The UN, in its 2010 report on the DRC, has found that the RPF was guilty of the worst crimes in the past decade – often against Hutus, “genocidaires”.

My view is that the ICTR, rather than ensuring the region of an impartial judge and blaming each side for their wrongs, is allowing one of them a status of victim and providing it with a free pass for repressive measures. These can have no other impact than to exacerbate ethnic tensions, once again.