On this day in 1994, Jean Kambanda became the Prime Minister of Rwanda. During the 100-day campaign, he incited genocide on the radio by announcing, "Genocide is justified in the fight against the enemy." He became the first head of state to plead guilty to genocide since the adoption of the Genocide Convention and was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). His sentence was upheld on appeal on October 19, 2000. He currently is in prison in Bamako Central Prison, Mali. In memory of those known and unknown who died . . . More

During the past week, three of the five permanent members on the UN Security Council publicly called for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to step down from office. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom point to the continued violence, the regime's repressive policies against opponents and the media, its failed economic management, and the worsening cholera and humanitarian disasters. On Sunday, Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga recommended an immediate authorization of African Union or UN troops by the African Union and the UN Security Council acting under its Chapter VII powers and the investigation of President Mugabe for crimes against humanity. China and Russia, however, are leery of the potential precedent should the UN Security Council authorize coercive intervention in Zimbabwe's sovereign domestic affairs. The government of Zimbabwe, meanwhile, contends that the cholera outbreak is the direct consequence of international sanctions and that the major powers are using the outbreak as political smoke screen to "mask their itch for aggression." This post discusses whether there is legal authority under international law for the international community to respond through the UN Security Council to a public health emergency, in the absence of state consent, when a state fails to protect its citizens or the people of other states during an infectious outbreak. More

On Monday, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will seek the arrest of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir for crimes committed in Darfur over the past five years. The indictment will be publicly available on the ICC website and will outline the exact crimes charged under the Rome Statute. If charged with the crime of genocide, President al-Bashir will become the first sitting head of state to be charged as such. The indictment comes on the 13th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide in the former Yugoslavia and more than three years after the referral of the case to the ICC by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1593. More

Today, human rights activists will meet with representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to bring attention to the Juba peace talks between the Ugandan government and the insurgent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. The activists seek additional humanitarian aid and high-level U.S. support for the peace talks, which are being mediated by the government of Southern Sudan. Peace negotiator Betty Bigombe considers the United States' political involvement as vital to maintaining the ceasefire and to ensuring continued progress of the peace talks. Uganda President Yoweri Museveni has warned that "this is the last chance for these terrorists" because his administration will not negotiate if these talks fail. Complicating the negotiations, four rebel leaders are unable to attend the talks in person for fear of arrests for war crimes indictments issued by the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The Ugandan crisis highlights the tension between the mandate of the ICC to prosecute egregious war crimes and the pragmatic need by governments to grant amnesty in order to achieve peace. One proposed solution would delay the imposition of the retributive approach by the ICC until after domestic approaches to conflict resolution are exhausted. The United States, a vocal critic of the ICC, may support this solution. However, will the broader international community be willing to accept a solution that would grant broad amnesty to human rights violators and that potentially could weaken the authority of the ICC? More

More than forty years have elapsed since the Democratic Republic of Congo's last democratic poll, which was held in 1960 upon gaining independence from Belgium, and the country's constitutional referendum of 18-19 December 2005, in which 84% of the voters endorsed a new 229-article constitution (in French). The referendum represents a major turning point for Africa's largest civil war, which has claimed 3.5 million lives since 1998, left 3.4 million internally displaced, and forced 443,000 refugees into asylum in nine bordering nations. With the nation's sovereignty at stake and the transitional government's mandate expiring in June 2006, DR Congo's transitional President Joseph Kabila urged the populace to support the new constitution, warning that rejection of it would be "catastrophic." Kabila must now deliver on his promises of decentralized power-sharing, increased political rights for women, political accountability, and economic liberalization as the country prepares for presidential and parliamentary elections in March and April 2006 and local elections by 30 June 2006. More