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In the current geopolitical context, the International Criminal Court has managed to stand its ground as a well-accepted international organization. Since its creation in 1998, the ICC has seen four countries refer situations on their own territory and adopted the Rome Statute which solidified the Court's role in international criminal law. Is the ICC sufficiently funded, how is the money spent, and what does this look like when compared to other international organisations?

The post How much money does the International Criminal Court need? appeared first on OUPblog.

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Ten years after the UNSC’s referral of the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the ICC, the sad reality is that all the main suspects still remain at large, shielded by their high position within the Government of Sudan.

The post South Africa and al-Bashir’s escape from the ICC appeared first on OUPblog.

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We begin with Amira's 12 birthday.  She is finally old enough to wear a toob yet young enough to enjoy her Dando lifting her to the sky.  Amira lives on a farm in South Darfur surrounded by friends and family, but changes are afoot.  Amira's best friend Halima and her family are packing their things and moving to the city.  They say the city has more opportunities.  Amira wishes she could go with them to Nyala and attend the Gad Primary School with Halima.  Amira is not so sure about her Muma's old fashioned ways.

                  "She does not like the idea of Gad,
                    or any place where girls learn
                    to read
                    or write,
                    in Arabic or English
                    or think beyond a life
                    of farm chores and marriage." (p. 13 arc)

Soon, the extra chores of 12, missing Halima, and trying to solve the ongoing bickering between her father and villager Old Anwar seem anything but troubling.  The relative peace of her village is shattered when the Janjaweed  attack, changing Amira's very existence.

Amira and the other survivors must pick up the pieces and leave the ruins of the village to find safety.  Their trek takes them to the refugee camp Kalma - the Displaced People's Camp.  Amira doesn't like this space surrounded by fences and barbed wire.

                    "Everywhere I look,
                      I see
                      people, people, and more people.

                      I'm glad to stop walking.
                      I'm glad we have finally reached who-knows-where.
                      But already I do not like this place." (arc p. 139)

It would be easy enough to give up in such a desperate place with no real end in sight.  Amira and her family have lost so much.  But when Amira meets Miss Sabine and is given a gift of a red pencil she discovers some things about herself, her family and those on the journey with her.

Written in free verse, The Red Pencil is a story of family and loss and hope.  It was eye opening for me on a number of levels.  One is that it is so easy for me not to see what is happening in the world from my perch here in NYC.  The horrors of Darfur in the early 2000s seemed so far away in time and place that I wonder how many people in North America are aware of what was happening.  I find myself very impressed with the deftness of Andrea Davis Pinkney's hand when it came to writing the passages dealing with the violence.  She truly tells the story from a 12 year old's point of view, and the free verse format allows for silences that speak volumes.  The illustrations by Shane W. Evans are playful within this serious book and somehow bring a feeling of safety to the pages.

A must read for librarians, teachers and students.

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This week, we announced that South Sudan is the 2011 Place of the Year and quizzed you about how much you know. Now, we present a slideshow of photos provided courtesy of Lucian Perkins and the United States Holocaust Museum.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Andrew S. Natsios served as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2001 to 2005, where he was appointed as Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. He also served as Special Envoy to Sudan from October 2006 to December 2007. He is author of the forthcoming volume Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know.

View more about this book on the

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Yesterday, we announced that South Sudan is the 2011 Place of the Year. How much do you know about Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur? Test your knowledge with this quiz by Andrew S. Natsios.

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By Andrew S. Natsios For more than two centuries, Sudan has attracted an unusual level of attention beyond its own borders. This international interest converged in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century as four independent forces met. First, there is the rebellion in Darfur, which has generated greater international concern than any other recent humanitarian crisis. This long-neglected western region has been intermittently at war since the 1980s and claimed the lives of 300,000 Darfuris in its most recent phase. The rebellion beginning in 2002 led to an ongoing humanitarian emergency, costing Western governments

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By Gérard Prunier

On May 2nd a force of over 1,000 Chadian rebels mounted on a bevy of Toyota battle wagons and left western Darfur to try to overthrow Chad’s government. This was the third time an overthrow attempt was made, the previous occasions being April 2007 and February 2008. Both previous attacks had been close, but ended in defeat. Similar to the previous two episodes, the recent invasion had the support of the Sudanese government, but since President Omar Hassan el-Bashir now stands accused of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and needs the critical support of the African Union, one can wonder what would cause him to launch into such a dangerous adventure.

The answer is simple: counter-insurgency. This takes us back to the early days of the Darfur quasi-genocide. President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad is a member of the Bidayat, a tribe closely related to the Zaghawa. The Zaghawa live on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border and the Sudanese Zaghawa are one of main tribes fighting the Khartoum regime. President Déby who gained power in December 1990 with the help of that very same Khartoum regime, refused at first to help his fellow tribesmen on the other side of the border. On the contrary, he even tried to help the Khartoum government. This did not sit very well with “his” Zaghawa who made up the core group of the Chadian armed forces. In May 2005 he was faced by a military revolt of his men. Déby was given the choice of either switching sides or being overthrown. This offer was not one to be easily refused and within months the mostly Zaghawa based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Khalil Ibrahim had Déby’s support.

This, of course, angered Omar el-Bashir and the Khartoum government started to recruit some disaffected elements from Chad to train and arm. Eighteen months later, they launched the first attack on N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. In reprisal President Déby armed the JEM and asked for its help against the rebels. In February 2008 JEM fighters joined the Chadian army to push back the rebels who had attacked N’Djamena, turning the whole conflict into an intra-Zaghawa war since members of the same tribe (but from different clans) were on both sides of the firing line. Three months later it was payback time and Khalil Ibrahim crossed the vast semi-desertic expanse of the Kordofan province to attack Khartoum itself. This attack too failed. Since the ICC indictment, the Sudanese regime feels embattled and fears that Déby, possibly with French and/or US support, might rearm Khalil Ibrahim and launch him again on the assault.

Given this very real danger, el-Bashir and his entourage have decided that the JEM guns are more dangerous than the possible disapproval of the African Union. In any case, the Union is so supine in the Sudanese case that it is likely to look the other way and accept Khartoum’s unconvincing denial of any complicity in the Chadian invasion.

The question remains, will the men in Khartoum manage to defeat Idriss Déby? This is not certain at all. Since last February, Déby, who is an unpopular but formidable warlord in his own right, has fortified his capital, bought heavy tanks and three Russian Sukhoi fighter-bombers. He has also recruited foreign mercenaries from as far as Mexico and the Ukraine. The Sudanese intelligence is aware of his military preparedness and they are at present trying to trigger a palace coup, which would have a greater chance of success than a frontal military assault. After all, there are still Zaghawa on both sides…

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Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Be sure to check back on Tuesdays to read more Notes From Africa.

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By Gérard Prunier

The indictment of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir by the International Criminal Court on March 4th was an expected move. Beforehand commentators had tried to guess what kind of reaction could be triggered if the regime felt threatened by international action. The guesses ran from predicting an internal coup – Bashir’s associates would consider him a liability and dump him, to dire predictions of attacks against foreigners – embassies recommended that their personnel should be extra careful and not go out if they could avoid it, and by way of starting an impending attack by the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)guerrilla group against Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.

In their considerable variety, all these predictions had one thing in common: they were grand. They required dramatic action and implied violent and desperate resolve. The whole paraphernalia of media Islamism – terrorists, fanatical crowds, rabble-rousing agitators – was supposed to be brought to the fore. The perpetrators were to be dangerous and the victims important. When the indictment was issued and the reaction duly took place, the reality was much less grand. It was much meaner and devoid of all the grandstanding which had taken place.

The Sudanese government decided to expel thirteen of the most important NGOs working in Darfur. Together they kept alive about 650,000 out of the 2.7 million internally displaces persons (IDP). How? By distributing food, supplying health care, and distributing fuel, fuel which is essential to run the pumps that bring the water from the wells that have been dug in the camps. One should try to imagine the incredibly cramped situation of the refugees who literally live on top of each other. Previously available water simply wouldn’t do. Wells were dug. Deep wells. Wells that required fuel for the pumps. Within two weeks the refugees will be desperately chasing any water, including dirty and contaminated water, because there won’t be anything else. Another crisis in addition to the reduced food rations and rapidly disappearing health care.

This was the cleverest and most cowardly way to re-start the genocide (which had been “on hold,” so to speak, for the past two years, with a regular but limited number of casualties). It was not started with noisy bullets and cruel looking Janjaweed riders, but silently, through disease and underfeeding.

Bashir and his henchmen knew that the world might not tolerate pictures of massacres, but people quietly dying under their tents are not much of a show.

Now some of the Janjaweed who feel a bit deprived of their usual benefits have taken to kidnapping three workers of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium and are asking for a ransom. United Nations Secretary General Ban ki Moon reacted immediately by holding the Sudanese government responsible for the kidnapping. Once more, it was the humanitarian workers who were hit, in an attempt at stampeding them out of Darfur and causing as much suffering and destruction as possible among the IDP population.

Last month the Sudanese Army fought the guerillas in a series of pitched battles in Muhajiriyyah and on the slopes of Jebel Mara. This terror was roundly beaten. Starving civilians to death is definitely easier, even if it is the act of cowards.

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Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophefocuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Be sure to check back on Tuesdays to read more Notes From Africa.

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By Gérard Prunier

The so-called, “Darfur peace talk” in Doha, Quatar on February 17th was even more ridiculous than the previous efforts at “building peace” in the desperate province of Western Sudan. The language of the final communiqué sounded like an Arab transliteration of a Henry James novel: they expressed their “high appreciation for His Highness the Emir of Qatar Khalifa al-Thani’s generous sponsorship of the peace process,” they “recognized the constructive support of neighboring countries,” they “accorded a strategic priority to peace,” they “accepted to take the necessary measures to create a favorable environment to help attain a lasting peace settlement,” and they promised “to commit themselves to continue serious discussions leading towards peace.”

The reader remains dumbfounded by the yawning abysses of what we call in Arabic, kalam faadi (empty talk). The whole reunion led to absolutely nothing but pious platitudes, while all hell broke loose between the very parties who were facing each other and discussing in Doha.

In early February violent fighting had broken out in Muhajiriya, in South Darfur. This was followed by the bombardment of Thabit on the 18th and a battle in Sheriya, just west of Al-Fashir on the 19th. Finally there were carpet bombings of various locations in the west of Jebel Mara in Central Darfur. The government congratulated itself on a “new development in the peace process,” and The Justice and Equality Movement(JEM) guerrillas declared on February 23rd that “the signing of the Doha Agreement, February 17th 2009, was certainly a step forward along the road for peace in Darfur.” Then, on February 24th, upon learning about the probable indictment of President Omar el-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) next March 4th, JEM guerrilla chief Khalil Ibrahim announced that “now the war will intensify.” Did I hear anyone mention the word duplicity?

So, what was Doha apart from an alcohol-free cocktail party? It was:

• A failed attempt by Khalil Ibrahim to free his brother who had been captured by the Khartoum Army after the failure of the JEM raid on Omdurman last May. Khalil’s brother was also his Chief-of-Staff and his main weapons procurement officer. Many other prisoners were to be exchanged (JEM , which had had the upper hand, has captured a lot of government Army officers in Darfur).
• It was also a bid by JEM for center stage. Their desire to be recognized as the main, or perhaps even the sole, interlocutor of the international community among the Darfur guerrillas.
• It was a signal to Muhamar al-Gaddafi, the new “King” of the African Union, that JEM and Khalil were the main players in Darfur.
• It was also a discreet forum in which to try to negotiate the freedom of Hassan al-Turabi, Khalil’s old political mentor who was arrested last month and is now in dangerous detention in Port Sudan (Turabi is 72, he has high blood pressure and Port Sudan is one of the hottest spots on earth. His place of detention is not air-conditioned).

In other words, Doha’s cocktail party was only an episode in the ongoing conflict in Darfur and logically just opened into more violence. As Khalil said, now that the peace talks are over, “the war will intensify.”

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Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophefocuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia provides Prunier with an up-close look at the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Be sure to check back on Tuesdays to read more Notes From Africa.

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Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Living in Ethiopia allows Prunier a unique view of the politics and current events of Central and Eastern Africa. Below Prunier discusses the involvement of the Rwandan Patriotic Army in Congo.

On the morning of Tuesday January 20th, at the invitation of the Kinshasa government, a column of at least 2,000 soldiers from the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) crossed the border into the Congo towards Goma. This was the first time Rwandese forces had walked on Congolese soil since their evacuation at the end of the war in 2002. Why had they come?

The official purpose was to eliminate the continuing threat posed by the genocidaires remnants of the former Hutu Rwandese regime, the forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC) had consistently failed to dislodge. A less visible purpose was to eliminate Congolese Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda who had gotten too big for his breeches and was beginning to embarrass his (un)official sponsors in Kigali. The third – and unacknowledged – purpose was to redistribute the local wildcat mining interests.

Nkundahad fought with the anti-Kinshasa rebels during the 1998-2003 war. But then he had refused to integrate the new national army and claimed to lead a movement to “save the Congolese Tutsi from genocide.” Later, he created his own political movement, the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) with the avowed ambition to “liberate” the whole Congo. This began to place him in a rather ambiguous position vis-à-vis his sponsors in Rwanda who did not mind using him to keep a piece of the mining action in Kivu but who certainly did not want to upset the whole international game by attempting to overthrow a legally elected government.

Aware of the fact that Nkunda had only limited support in Kigali, the Kinshasa government attacked him in October of last year but got miserably trounced, given the sorry state of the FARDC. In fact, the whole military-political confrontation was being played out on a background of complex – and contradictory – mining operations. During the war the main source of illegal mining wealth was Columbium-Tantalite(“Coltan”) which had reached very high prices. After 2002-2003 Coltan prices plummeted down due to the massive development of Australian mines. Other minerals (Niobium, Tungsten, Nickel, and Gold) took the place of Coltan. The mines were fairly special: small, illegal, located in hard-to-access places, exploited with very low-tech means, and produced at a very low cost. Kigali agents and FDLR former genocidaires often worked together since FDLR was beyond the pale and the politically correct Tutsi were better able to commercialize the minerals. But this was not a very satisfying solution for the Rwandese regime which ended up sponsoring its enemies. Once it became obvious that the FDLR’s role as a pretext for intervention was getting obsolete, a direct deal between Rwanda’s President, Kagame and Congo’s President,Kabila seemed like a good idea. It would squeeze out both Nkunda (now arrested and replaced by his number two, Bosco Ntaganda) and the FDLR, which would lead to a more beneficial sharing of the mining interests and please the international community. But there was only one problem with this sweet scenario: the Rwandese Army is still hated in the Eastern Congo for the atrocities it committed there during the war. Inviting it in was a very delicate matter.

President Kabila thought he could go over the head of the public opinion, but this is not working very well: the public is incensed at seeing the Rwandese back in the Congo, especially since they were called in by the President they have elected (Kabila’s majority vote came mainly from the East). Extirpating the FDLR might not be as easy as the two Presidents thought. The Rwandese Army is not welcome locally and neither are the violent and undisciplined FARDC. The Rwandese intervention is likely to become another episode of the “post-war war,” not the end of it.

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Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. Below is a brief look at the current movements of the Somalia pirates and a proposed alternate way of understanding these so-called “terrorists.”

This piece could be taken as being tongue-in cheek. In fact it should be thoughtfully considered, beyond its apparently provocative aspect.

Since the spectacular seajacking of a Ukrainian transport carrying thirty-three battle tanks heading for Southern Sudan last September 25th followed by the capture of a Saudi tanker carrying $100m of crude oil, the international community has been in a big huff about the notorious Somali pirates operating off the coast of Puntland. They have been called “terrorists” and are now chased by naval units from Germany, France, the United States, China, Australia, India, Russia, Japan, Great Britain, and even Iran. The highly respectable American Enterprise Institute, which in this case seems not to see the original quality of their business initiatives, has declared that “even if ridding Somalia of pirates would by no means solve the country’s problems, it is an absolute first step.” Seven Private Military Companies (PMCs) are on the ranks for the privilege of shooting them with the most advanced technology, including Blackwater of Iraq renown. An energetic blogger is calling for “shooting them on sight.” Their sin? Capturing about 110 ships in 2008 and making $150m in ransom money. The main loss was for the shipping companies, forced to pay higher insurance premiums. If we look more closely at the phenomenon, what do we see?

• Starving young men in small fiberglass boats powered by outboard motors going hundreds of miles from shore on dangerous seas.
• They shoot but try not to kill. So far only one hostage has been shot out of hundreds of seamen taken.
• Many die, like the five man crew who drowned after getting the ransom for the Sirius Star tanker. They lost their lives and their money. One body was washed ashore with $153,000 in his pocket. His relatives put the money to dry. A hard way to keep your family alive.
• Yes, they build big houses, buy shiny cars and sweep beautiful girls off their feet. PMCs operatives who hope to shoot them have fairly similar career plans.
• Those who are captured go to jail, contrary to their militia fellow countrymen on land who murder, loot and rape civilians without any international interference.

Let’s be frank, those boys are no angels. But why focus so much on them? The reason is simple. They cost international business a lot of money, which is absolutely scandalous: Somalis are supposed to kill each other and not come out and tamper with shipping lanes and insurance rates. The Suez Canal Authority is losing millions because of these fellows. Why can’t they get themselves some Toyotas with rocket launchers and join the ranks of the Islamists? If they did, nobody would bother them. But then no more booze, beautiful girls or shiny cars. All they could do would be to pray to Allah and highjack a Red Cross truck, like true Somalis.

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Eve Donegan, Sales and Marketing Assistant

Gérard Prunier is a widely acclaimed journalist as well as the Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa. He has published over 120 articles and five books, including The Rwanda Crisis and Darfur. His most recent book, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe focuses on Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and events that led to the death of some four million people. In this original post, Prunier discusses the history of the Joseph Kony led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the ongoing conflict that led to almost 200 deaths this Christmas.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had its own way of celebrating Christmas: on December 25th it hacked an estimated 189 people to pieces in the Congolese town of Faradje, 80 km from the Sudanese border.
This homicidal explosion was a direct result of the combined attack by Congolese, Southern Sudanese, and Ugandan troops on the LRA stronghold in Garamba National Park in the DRC where the political-religious sect had been holed up for the past two years.

The LRA is made up of a semi-deranged leadership manipulating abducted illiterate children who have been brainwashed into committing atrocities. Indeed, its leader Joseph Kony has time and time again reneged on promises of turning up in Juba for peace talks with the Ugandan government, but the LRA’s murderous actions put it beyond the pale of civilized society. Beyond this moral judgment it remains for the social analyst to explain – not excuse – what is going on.

• Atrocious as it is, the LRA is the expression of the 23 year old alienation of the populations of Northern Uganda who have been punished beyond reason for the atrocities that they themselves visited upon the Southerners during the period of the Obote II and Okello governments (1980-1986). In spite of being preyed upon by the LRA vultures, the Northern Ugandan Acholi tribe still half supports it because it fights the Museveni regime.

• During its long history of fighting the Kampala government, the LRA has been aided and abetted by the Sudanese regime in Khartoum; not because it is Islamic (Kony’s confused “religion” is a hazy blend of Christianity, traditional cults, and messianic inventions), but because its is both a thorn in the side of Uganda and a problem for the potentially secessionist semi-autonomous government of Southern Sudan. Khartoum’s regime loves to mess things up towards the Great Lakes which it sees as an area of Islam’s future expansion.

• If we broaden our view even more, we can say that unfortunately the International Criminal Court which has indicted Kony and his officers for crimes against humanity (of which they are fully guilty) has cut off any avenue of negotiation with the cult leader who now prefers to die fighting than to end his days in prison in Europe.

• And last but not least, the LRA has acted as an evil magnet for all the social flotsam and jetsam resulting from years of war and insurgency in the whole region, from the Congo to Northern Uganda and from Southern Sudan to the Central African Republic. The LRA traffics in prohibited game animals, exploits various mines, and it gets money and weapons from Khartoum. Worse, it gives “employment” to disenfranchised young men (and even the girls it uses as servants and sex objects) who are left to fall through the supposed “safety net” of their inefficient governments and of a bewildered and slow-moving “international community.”

The tragic dimension of the LRA saga is a direct expression of the situation in Central Africa where neither guns nor diplomatic action seem to get anywhere. Given Kony’s messianic bend the best solution might be an exorcist.

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