Changing the scaffolding of law in the world - a letter to the Wash. Post from my friend: “Palestinians move to join ICC.” Washington Post Jan. 1, 2015. One day after a failed bid at the UN to push a Middle East peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority President announced a move for the PA to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a way of seeking to get international judicial support for its ‘war crimes’ allegations against Israel. Now U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has indicated that the Palestinian Authority will be allowed to join the ICC. Israel’s Netanyahu noted that the Palestinian Authority really should refrain from taking this case to the ICC because of Hamas’s own rocket attacks on Israeli population centers and their use of civilians as human shields. ICC prosecutors have made it clear in the past that they will investigate all allegations of misdeeds in a dispute, not just those of one side. Most unprejudiced people would agree that there must be accountability for anyone committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. Unfortunately, at present the ICC can work only in those cases where nation-states, even those accused of crimes, allow it jurisdiction. This is another example of the miserable state of the present international system where unlimited national sovereignty is allowed to trump protecting human rights. Even though 139 countries have signed the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the ICC, the most horrific crimes against humanity perpetuated in the past decade—in North Korea, Syria and Sri Lanka, among other places – presently remain outside of the ICCs reach. This is not justice. This is not a deterrent against mass murder, crimes against humanity or genocide, as the ICC was intended to be. We need a fundamental change in the current international system where unlimited national sovereigny is allowed to take priority over the protection of human rights. Such a change is likely to come only with much more awareness about the present international system and a resulting massive change in public opinion. The sovereign rights of ‘we the people’ must take priority over the interests of national governments and the misplaced devotion to unlimited national sovereignty if international law is ever to be considered anything other than hopeful ideals.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 14:26:04 +0000
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