In a piece for the The Stanford Daily, Nadejda Marques, manager of the Program on Human Rights at the CDDRL, writes about victims' reparations and the experience at the International Criminal Court.

As explained by Professor Cherif Bassiouni on Jan. 29 at the CDDRL Program on Human Rights Sanela Diana Jenkins Speakers Series, victims before the International Criminal Court (the ICC) have rights that combine the practice in proceedings of two different legal systems: the Civil Law and the Common Law system.

Through direct victim representation, an important aspect of the civil law system, those who have suffered severe abuses may present to the ICC their points of view to the judges. In the civil system, this is important because it allows the prosecutor to assess harm and damages suffered and request corresponding reparations. In common law systems, victim representation is more central in civil cases, though increasingly the perspective of victims has been relevant during criminal sentencing.

In the ICC, victims are not required to participate in the court proceedings and the court may even decide on its own to make an award for reparations. That is, independent of any motion by the prosecutor, the victim may also seek reparation directly from the ICC through the Trust Fund for Victims, an independent body of the court charged with implementing the court’s decisions and providing physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and material support to victims of crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC. Furthermore, the Trust Fund for Victims at the ICC can also act to benefit victims of crimes even when there is no conviction.

Why is this a valuable lesson? Suppose that the defendant accused of horrendous crimes does not have sufficient assets to cover the damages imposed onto the victim? In many countries including the United States, reparations are often based on the defendant’s ability to pay. Apart from a few cases of restitution for sex crimes in the United States, governments seldom take responsibility for losses and suffering caused by private individuals, leaving victims to their own resources, their personal insurance and their own means to recover and rehabilitate. When that happens, is justice done?

What do victims want? From years of researching and working with victims of human rights abuse including victims of war crimes in the context of Angola and, more recently, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the sentencing of perpetrators is only one of the elements of justice as understood by victims. Victims and survivors usually ask for guarantees that the crimes and violation of rights will not take place again. They want restitution to re-establish the lives they had before the violations took place, and they need support so they and their communities can work to overcome the severe psychological consequences affecting generations of victims’ descendants.

The ICC Trust Fund for Victims needs to raise funds to support the reparations it grants. Contributors to the fund are states, private donors, foundations and individuals that wish to support victims and communities that see the ICC as last resort. The Trust Fund for Victims is far from perfect. It struggles to ensure sufficient funds to sustain victims’ requested reparations, and it is not well equipped to establish reparations in cases of collective application. However, as the idealism that created the ICC in the first place, the ICC Trust Fund sends a signal of great relevance: reparations are an important representation of the justice process for victims of human rights abuse.

When the International Criminal Court (the ICC) issued its first decision on reparations of victims – in the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, convicted in March of 2012 for conscripting, enlisting and using child soldiers in the DRC – it established an important precedent in victims’ agency in the identification of needs and in the design of reparations. This precedent can be a valuable lesson to the justice systems in many countries including the United States. As the ICC enters its second decade, let us learn the lessons that can become pillars in the expansion of international justice and may one day establish jurisprudence that benefits victims within the countries.

Nadejda Marques
Manager of the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)

Carnegie Corporation of New York, the foundation that promotes “real and permanent good in this world,” has awarded a $1 million grant to CISAC to fund research and training on international peace and security projects over the next two years. 

Specific areas of focus include research on strengthening communities in Afghanistan through collaborative civilian-military operations, several projects on improving nuclear security, and a study of community policing interventions to increase public safety and stability in rural Kenya. 

“The breadth and extent of Carnegie’s support will be crucial in advancing CISAC’s research and teaching to help build a safer world,” said CISAC Co-Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. 

As part of a project funded in part by the Carnegie Grant, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at FSI and the School of Engineering and a CISAC faculty member, and Siegfried S. Hecker – former CISAC co-director and professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering – will travel, consult and write on issues of nuclear security in Russia and China. Their goal is to increase technical cooperation between national nuclear laboratories in the United States and Russia. They will also pursue Track II dialogue with Pakistan to promote stability in South Asia.  

“It is crucial to promote cooperation with Russia and China on nuclear issues, both in terms of superpower relations and preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism around the world,” Hecker said. “Bill Perry and I will continue to use our broad network of contacts to promote common approaches to reducing global nuclear risks.” 

Also in the area of nuclear security, Lynn Eden, CISAC senior research scholar and associate director for research, will take a hard look at the conflicting U.S. nuclear weapons strategy and policy for her project, “Vanishing Death: What do we do when we plan to fight a nuclear war?” Eden will focus on nuclear war planning and draw out the implications for future nuclear policies, including achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. She intends to publish her research with the goal of better informing the American public about the paradoxes and contradictions of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. 

“A historically informed public will be in a far better position to democratically participate in nuclear weapons policy debates, including questions of reducing the role and size of global nuclear weapons arsenals,” Eden said. 

The Carnegie grant also will enable CISAC senior research scholar Joseph Felter, a retired U.S. Army colonel, to assess and compare the effectiveness of counterinsurgency strategies and operations in the Philippines and Afghanistan. The former director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and commander of the International Security Assistance Force’s Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team in Afghanistan, Felter has reported to the nation’s senior military officers and intends to generate a number of policy scenarios to be incorporated by the military. 

“CISAC brings scientists and engineers together with social scientists, government officials, military officers, and business leaders to collaboratively analyze some of the world’s most pressing security problems,” said Carnegie Corporation’s Patricia Moore Nicholas, project manager of the International Program.  “The original thinking and proposed solutions that emerge from these collaborations will help address a series of enduring and emerging challenges.” 

The funding for the project in Kenya will allow James D. Fearon, the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a CISAC affiliated faculty member to study the security sectors in Kenya, and then to use this research as a basis for developing effective strategies for peace building in other states in transition.

 

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged Stanford students to become global citizens, working together beyond borders for peace, security and a common prosperity.

"You may come from the United States or Korea, Japan or elsewhere, Arab countries, but you're now part of a global family," Ban said to a crowded auditorium during his campus visit. "Therefore, it's very important to raise your capacity as global citizens. Only then, I think we can say, we're living in a very harmoniously prosperous world."

Despite a troubling tally of crises around the world, Ban was hopeful about the future, and said he gains inspiration from the younger generation.

"Everything my life has taught me points to the power of international solidarity to overcome any obstacle," he said.

Ban's speech, sponsored by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, kicked off a series of events celebrating the 30th anniversary of the center.

Ban was introduced by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, an FSI senior fellow, who lauded Ban for his work on women's rights, climate change, nuclear disarmament and gay rights.

Ban told the audience that the world was undergoing massive changes and outlined three ways to navigate the transition: sustainable development, empowering young people and women, and pursuing dignity and democracy.

"The level and degree of global change that we face today is far more profound than at any other period in my adult lifetime," he said.

"We have no time to lose," he added later.

California, he said, has led on clean air legislation, creating a cap-and-trade law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"I am convinced national and state action can spur progress in global negotiations, creating a virtuous cycle," he said.

"Syria is in a death spiral," he said. He cited the toll the conflict has taken on Syria's citizens and surrounding countries since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. More than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Hundreds of thousands more have been displaced.

Ban spoke at Stanford as a hostage crisis also unfolded in the region.

In retaliation for military action by France in the West African nation of Mali, Islamist extremists in Algeria took several hostages at an international gas field Thursday. News organizations reported that the kidnappers and some hostages were killed in a raid by the Algerian government.

Ban spoke of the efforts by the United Nations to counter terrorism in Mali, where Islamist rebels last year took control in the north in the chaos following a military coup that ousted the elected government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.

"We must continue to work for peace," Ban said. "Our hard work cannot be reversed, especially for women and young people."

With half the world's population under the age of 25, Ban said the international community must support and empower that group.

Ban also said that fighting for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities was important in advancing peace and prosperity around the world.

"I have learned to speak out for one essential reason," he said. "Lives and fundamental values are at stake."

Ban told the students to harness a spirit of hope as they confront the challenges of the world.

For him, he said, that spirit was sparked by a visit to California decades ago. He reflected on an eight-day visit to the state in 1962, when he stayed with a family, the Pattersons, in Novato on a trip sponsored by the Red Cross.

"In many ways, I still carry the same energy and enthusiasm and sense of wonder that I did when I first landed on Miss Patterson's doorstep half a century ago," he said.

"I came back knowing what I wanted to do with my life and for my country," he said.

Ban said he still keeps in touch with his host, his "American mom," 95-year-old Libba Patterson, who was in the audience and stood to applause.

"It was here in California," he reflected to the students, "that I first felt I could grab the stars from the sky."

This book originated in a conference on "Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regimes" held at Stanford University in Oct. 2010. 

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt’s "Facebook revolution" forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile.

While such "liberation technology" has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases—such as China and Iran—demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between "netizens" demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power.

Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of "liberation" versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia.

This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi—a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya’s 2007 elections—and alkasir—a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship.

Liberation Technology will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy.

Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski, Mehdi Yahyanejad

As French troops deployed to Mali this week to push back Islamist rebels, CDDRL Post-Doctoral Fellow Landry Signé writes in the New York Times that the failure to restore democracy sooner has descended the country into a devilish civil war with grave humanitarian consequences. Signé argues that Mali's West African neighbors and the international community should have acted earlier to restore peace and security to a country long recognized for its democratic stability.

FSE's Benin solar market garden project was picked as one of the most five hopeful energy stories of 2012 by National Geographic. Jennifer Burney, FSE fellow and lead on the Benin project, is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. FSE began its partnership with the Solar Electric Light Fund in 2007 and continues to work together to spread the technology into new villages in West Africa.