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Read: “Space Is for All”: An Interview with NASA Engineer Loay Elbasyouni

Following this decision, the ICC ruled that possible cases of war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem, would be admissible. This paved the way for the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for crimes committed by Israel. In fact, the Office of the Prosecutor has an ongoing investigation. Following the attacks that began after October 7, on 29 October, ICC Prosecutor Ahmad Khan invited individuals and organizations, whether parties to the ICC or not, to submit new evidence and allegations relevant to the ongoing investigation. In this context, the Office of the Prosecutor is collecting information such as all kinds of documents and photographs relating to the incident, date, place/location, and damage suffered through the system established during the investigation phase.

In this process, Turkey has made many requests to the ICC. On November 24, a delegation from the Istanbul Bar Association No. 2 applied to the ICC with a dossier of evidence, including documents and photographs proving war crimes, and petitions collected from all over Turkey to punish the suspects who committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The delegation’s statement said that it was not enough to submit petitions: the evidence profile included video footage, photographs, witness statements, and victims’ statements. Similarly, the Turkish Bar Association petitioned the ICC against Israel, citing four specific incidents: “Attacks on hospitals and health facilities,” “Bombing of the Palestinian Bar Association,” “Attacks on media workers,” and “Attacks on refugee camps.”

The test of sincerity of international courts and organizations

The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed by the state of Israel in the Palestinian territories, a fact confirmed by the court. There is also no doubt that the statements and actions of the Israeli authorities over the past three months constitute clear violations of the laws of war and humanitarian law. In this situation, the ICC, whose raison d’être is to prevent such crimes, must act effectively and swiftly.

International conventions and the international law and institutions that have emerged as a result of them will face an important test in the coming months and years. Western states have already failed this test with their unconditional support for Israel’s attacks over the past eighty days, and their human rights discourse has lost all credibility. Unfortunately, there are serious doubts about the ICC prosecutor’s investigation and subsequent trial as well.

It remains to be seen whether the ICC prosecutor will conduct an effective investigation, what the outcome of the investigation will be, and whether the Israeli officials who committed these grave crimes will be prosecuted. International law requires that the arrest warrants are executed by the European states party to the Rome Statute. Thus, the attitude of these states towards the implementation of the decisions of the Office of the Prosecutor and the ICC will be closely monitored in the coming period. If a case is opened, the ICC’s verdict will be monitored and it will be expected to punish the criminals. Yet, the attitude of Western states towards Israel’s crimes casts doubt on the ICC investigation. All in all, the ICC process appears to be another test of the West’s sincerity on the protection of human rights.

The post Israel’s War Crimes and the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court appeared first on Politics Today.

“Space Governance is Just a Reflection of Power Politics,” An interview with Bleddyn E. Bowen

Politics Today — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 08:43:39 +0000

n Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space, Dr. Bleddyn E. Bowen presents the sobering reality of space technology; its development to enhance the killing power of the state.

Bowen discusses the political, strategic, and social causes and consequences of the Global Space Age and sees it as an outgrowth of the international system actors within it. The book provides a global view of international politics of space and its increasingly multipolar environment, and masterfully links technopolitics to power politics.

Q. What is the original sin? How did nations first decide to pursue space power?

It’s tied up in the Thermonuclear Revolution, through the pursuit of military power. If it wasn’t for the perceived military benefits of being able to launch nuclear weapons, you would not have had the very large sums of money poured into these very temperamental, exotic new technologies in the 1940s and ’50s. The scenario would be similar for satellite technologies; they were very temperamental and unknown. The potential benefits were so huge that both superpowers’ military industrial complexes in the early Cold War put resources into it, and got the things working that then opened up access to space for all sorts of other applications as well.

The original sin refers to the military interest in developing those very first technologies that opened up the entire space. It started with the Sputnik shock. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 was the product of the Soviet missile arms and nuclear project. It wasn’t just to have a demonstration; Khrushchev did not plan that. It was very much Sergei Korolev saying, “Well, we might as well put a demonstration satellite up there.”

They were building those rockets to launch nuclear weapons. Korolev was told he could only work on the satellite in his spare time, so that the work did not interfere with developing them as missiles with nuclear weapons. So, Korolev and his teams worked on Sputnik in their own time, not on the main line of work. Even the very first satellite launch was just the tip of the iceberg of what was a massive military nuclear buildup.

Q. How has the use of space technology evolved from back then?

What we have today are just mature and advanced versions of the same basic technological system. They are often decades old. GPS is 50 years old. We just have a very advanced version of it today compared to 50 years ago. So, it’s about the spread and the increased availability of the services rather than a change in the technology as such.

It didn’t happen overnight, but by the 1990s most of the kinds of satellite service types that we use today had been developed in their earliest generations, or sometimes even the second or third generations.

Satellite TV, for example, came out of military command and control systems. The Tokyo Olympics were broadcast by satellite in 1964; it was the first major sports event to be broadcast by satellite. That’s an example where the actual service and technology have been there for a long time, but it’s far more ubiquitous now.

Satellite navigation is another one. Various parts of the military and civilian economy in the United States were already using the very first services of GPS in the late 1980s. Today, those services are just far more accessible to everyone rather than just specialized organizations.

Similarly, with satellite imagery; one of the applications was in 1960 when the first Corona spy satellite images came back. Those things have been around for a very, very long time; now, you have a lot more commercial companies doing that, which means the private sector, and even individuals who have the money can purchase those kinds of images now, and get them much more quickly as well.

Q. What do you think is the future of space governance? Could we be talking about property rights in space?

The short, honest answer is that I don’t know what future it holds in terms of property rights. It’s interesting that a few countries have now legislated to allow the sale of extracted resources or surveyed resources in the domestic market. Luxembourg, the United States, and Japan have done that, and so there’s a direction of travel in that.

Some countries seem to want to interpret that the Outer Space Treaty, whilst it doesn’t allow any claims to territory, excludes extracted resources. If you send a robot there and take out valuable resources, then you have ownership of those resources you have extracted but you don’t own the territory. That is a bit of a gray area in the Outer Space Treaty, and it’ll be up to the countries that are interested in this to figure it out and decide: Do we need to have a common interpretation of Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty? Do we need to write a new subsidiary treaty? Perhaps, like the Liability Convention or the Astronaut rescue agreements which are sub-treaties to the Outer Space Treaty that develop the finer principles further.

Read: The US-China Rivalry over Space and Small Satellites Reaches New Levels

However, I’m not optimistic about that future, because if anything of value is found that is economically feasible to develop or exploit, then selfish interests will probably prevail because the precedent is already there in Earth orbit. If you want to look at the actual competition for resources in space, it’s been happening for decades already in the geostationary satellite belt.

At geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers above the equator, there’s a finite space and finite radio frequency spectrum to use, and different countries have to file at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to get the right to use the particular radio communication frequency and the location to put their satellite. They are given a time limit to get their satellites up there and to start using it. Then, they must continuously use it and have a satellite there, or they lose the right to that slot and somebody else can bid for it. It’s pretty much on a first-come-first-serve basis.

The geostationary belt and Earth orbit are so valuable for military and economic purposes that there is no truly equitable method of governance there. It may occur in the future; politics is about possibilities. However, that’s the precedence we’ve set over the last 70 years, and it’s not encouraging. I don’t think we’re going to have profitable moon mining anytime soon. I think that might take another 100 years or more. But if the moon becomes economically very valuable, there aren’t many positive precedents to use sadly.

Q. Do actors hog up these strategic locations? Is there any regulation that prevents such an act?

In terms of geostationary satellite slots and frequency use, it is first come, first served, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. The filings on the ITU are constantly watched because if countries or companies file for a certain frequency, and if it was approved, they own that frequency. Some countries like to file for very large satellite constellations and people evaluate this as an attempt to hog the spectrum or a location.

It’s up to the countries within the ITU to resolve those disputes before final decisions are made. If the ITU fails to make enough decisions that people think are fair, then the organization itself risks becoming desolate. There has to be some level of coordination to avoid jammed and incompatible satellite usage. So, you could end up with a situation where nobody can use satellites in a certain area, because too many people are trying to use it at the same time.

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Q. How does more countries or actors stepping into the space arena translate to international relations?

That is a difficult question. I won’t have a clear answer for you, because I’m observing it just like everyone else. The phrase the “democratization of space” is being thrown around a lot. I don’t like that phrase because I don’t think that having more countries doing things in space is necessarily democratic.

Space governance is usually more a reflection of power politics rather than any democratic process, and a lot of countries that are doing more things in space are not democratic countries themselves, and even within democratic countries there are questions over how involved the wider electorates are in space policy, or whether they are actually interested or informed about their countries’ space policies and activities. There’s a representation and engagement question there that we would ascribe to any system we would call democratic.

So, whilst there’s more population in space now, perhaps in terms of the number of different countries, and also large private companies doing things in space, I wouldn’t call it democratic. We don’t have a truly democratic governance structure for outer space. There are votes of the UN General Assembly, but it’s not really the same as the domestic democratic system.

On one hand, more countries are paying more attention to space now, because it affects everyone, so more engagement and more awareness is a good thing. On the other hand, it means that the ways that a lot of countries have been using the United Nations to try to govern space activities needs to be revisited in a way that recognizes that dozens more countries now have a stake in it. It’s not necessarily the West versus the rest, and it requires a shift in mentality for many of the older traditional space powers, including China, Japan, and India, just like Western Europe, the United States, and Russia.

The older, bigger traditional space powers are used to being able to do what they want to, without having to consider the rest of the world too much—that is less and less the case now. If they can’t change the ways they behave, or try to get agreements or consensus built in various forums, that may be an issue. Space is becoming more like governing the seas now, with a lot of smaller states much more involved and influential in any sort of UN-level agreement.

Q. Do different countries take similar or different paths in developing and utilizing space technology?

There are variations, especially in the way countries might want to present themselves. Yet, they share a lot of the same technological hurdles because it’s the same base technologies that you need to use. As I do in Original Sin, you can look at six or seven significant space powers and they all must get over the same technological hurdles to have their own access to space, their own launch vehicles, their own satellite industries, their own educated and trained workforce in space technology and sciences, etc.

Especially early on, when space knowledge and technology were not as widespread, there were many common challenges that had to be faced. But then, within that broad similarity, in terms of the technological challenges, you have the variations in the way certain countries go about doing things.

Japan, for example, didn’t really have that much of an explicit military connection to its satellite and launch vehicle deployment. The logic of autonomy and avoiding complete dependence on the United States was supported by the Japanese government, just in case Japan might need to develop its own nuclear weapons program in the upcoming years. Having a nuclear energy industry and a rocket launch industry, you got the fundamental infrastructure there to develop nuclear bombs and missiles, if you need to down the line. India’s major space efforts were presented in terms of social and economic development, much more so than the Soviet Union, China, and the United States.

Today, there are even more variations because there are already six established space powers: the United States, Europe, Russia, China, India, and Japan. Other countries can now cooperate or purchase services and pick and choose which aspect of space industries they want to develop or take part in. Take Nigeria, for example. It has dropped its old ambitions of having its own launch vehicle, its own rockets, and its own astronaut in space, and focused on satellites and using satellite data. That means, Nigeria has really important stakes in what goes on in space, but it can’t launch its own satellites and it still buys satellites. It still hasn’t gotten a full satellite manufacturing capability yet, but it operates and uses its own satellites.

Brazil has major Earth observation satellites in a joint program with China. It tried to have a launch program which failed, and they eventually gave up on it because it was just too expensive. Other countries, for a fee, would launch their satellites for them. Britain, for example, doesn’t have its own launch capability, but it does a lot in space science, engineering and research, integrated with the European Space Agency. It relies on the United States for security and intelligence applications in space and services, and is a world leader in small satellites manufacturing. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s got very targeted, niche strengths.

Finland has a commercial radar imagery satellite company, and is a big player in terms of the space economy and technology development in the particular area, but it doesn’t have its own rockets.

Just like any other aspect of military, technological, economic, or diplomatic power, space power has so many different applications. What matters is what kind of space technologies and industries each country actually needs because they will be different for each case.

Different countries today can tailor their space strategies and policies according to their economic and security needs, etc. The United Arab Emirates is particularly interesting. They are throwing money at space in lots of different areas; they are investing in defense security, economic infrastructure, and space exploration. They have sent a satellite to Mars and wanted to send a payload to the moon, but they still don’t want to build their own rockets.

Space is still so expensive and you need a lot of trained people and highly specialized skills. You need to have loads of people go into rocket science, which would take them out of other sectors of high-technology skills and training that they could otherwise be deployed at. Therefore, space power must be targeted in countries that are new to space or smaller countries.

Q. The Outer Space Treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in space but that’s not the case with conventional weapons. What measures can actors take to protect themselves?

This has been the case since 1967 based on Article 4 of the Outer Space Treaty. There’s not a lot you can do in terms of governance, because there’s no appetite for any more restrictions on other kinds of weapon bans in space. The Russians and the Chinese have tried to push a treaty on it, but it has not gotten anywhere. It is seen by many as a bad faith diplomatic exercise; it is not something that’s done with genuine intent to try to make space warfare less likely to happen.

There’s not a lot you can do other than to build more satellites, so that if something happens to one, there are more ready to take over, or to build terrestrial alternatives or backups. If the satellites go dark, there’s not a lot you can do because if a determined enemy wants to shoot down your satellite and they have technology capabilities, direct defense of satellites is very difficult.

Against electronic warfare or cyber warfare, there are more options for defense. However, it’s difficult for us on the outside to observe it. The forensics of that become very difficult. It’s hard to tell when something is a deliberate attack or just accidental.

They are highly proliferated and the cost to entry is lower, so smaller powers can do cyber operations. It’s difficult to stop a missile from blowing up your satellite but you have more options to respond to enemy jamming or a cyber attack, the effects of those can be reversed. So, in terms of governance, there’s not a lot you can do. On the other hand, militarily depending on the kind of attack, there are some things you can do in some areas.

Read: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers

Q. Is there currently an arms race in space?

I have a problem with the phrase “arms race” in space, because everybody uses it to try to score political points or create alarm. It sounds exciting, but the problem is that it’s used so much that the phrase has very little useful meaning. People confuse what is routine weapons development and testing for an arms race. Since we are in an anarchic international system, the great powers of the system will continue to seek to develop various kinds of weapons technologies and space is no different.

The fact that the big powers are exploring various kinds of anti-satellite weapons is not new. This is not the first time this has happened; an arms race would be if they start deploying dozens of anti-satellite platforms in succession on each side. We are not really seeing a mass deployment of a lot of space weapons but instead lots of development and testing. In terms of deployment of proven systems, we are not quite there yet but the countries are exploring their options.

It doesn’t mean we should like it or welcome it, but it’s just usual great power behavior. This is what they do, and normally it means that we shouldn’t be alarmed. We just approach it like we try to approach all great power interactions: Yes, they don’t trust each other. Yes, they’re going to build the weapons they think they need. But let’s keep talking and try to find ways to understand each other, and not think, “Oh, my God! They’re starting an arms race!” Because if you do that, many people think you have to race them back. This is sadly an inevitable part of great power relations, and we should treat it as such. People who do space like to think space is special. It isn’t.

Q. My last question is about orbital debris. What are the main issues with it? How does it affect the future of space activities?

Debris is a real problem. Collisions have happened before and they will happen again, and very little is being done in concrete terms to reduce the amount of debris that is generated through normal operations, or to clean up the debris that is there already. So, problems are only going to get worse. It’s much like climate politics: everybody who knows anything about the issue knows it’s only getting worse, and it’s going to be even worse for the next two or three generations of humans. But we’re not really doing enough about it.

Space politics is the same as terrestrial politics: you have countries that want to make money and people who don’t care so much about the environment or say it’s a problem for the next 30 years and not right now. Additionally, there’s also the cost of doing it. It would be a very costly activity to clean up an orbit, and of course, new actors in space who haven’t polluted outer space say, “Well, we didn’t make this mess. Why should we pay to clean up?” The political dynamics are the same, really. It’s a classic collective action problem.

In terms of future activities, it’ll make things riskier, costlier. In terms of passing through orbits, it shouldn’t be a problem, but there are already certain altitudes in the low Earth orbit which certain satellite operators are now ruling out because the chances of being hit by something are much higher than if they adapted their satellite to work maybe 300 kilometers higher up or lower down than the busy zones. However, eventually you’re going to run out of those quiet orbits. It’s already a problem that’s not going away anytime soon.

The post “Space Governance is Just a Reflection of Power Politics,” An interview with Bleddyn E. Bowen appeared first on Politics Today.

Five Books on How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming the Conduct of War

Politics Today — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 04:28:59 +0000

Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War by Robert H. Latiff (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022) Book cover

Robert H. Latiff’s Future Peace, a sequel to Future War, specifically brings to attention a subtle, yet potentially destructive effect of technologies such as autonomous systems, advanced weapons, and AI: the provocation to violence. Against the backdrop of the brewing power rivalry between the U.S. and its adversaries, technology aggregates tension and catalyzes violence.

Future Peace touches upon the ethical, security-related, behavioral, and technical aspects of technology and warfare. It consists of four chapters: “A Giant Armed Nervous System” (referring to the military), “Urge to Violence,” “Stumbling into War,” and “Avoiding War.”

Latiff’s book comes as a warning to practice caution when adopting new weapons technology, and aids in understanding human and technical behaviors to attenuate its harms and decrease the chances of war. Not only does technology make war easier and speedier, hence enabling the rush to war, but hinders human reasoning. Such technical changes make the process of sound judgement difficult; for example, thinking and acting in a diplomatic manner. Furthermore, these changes enhance the potential for human error to get out of hand.

Latiff argues that it is vitally important to avoid entering conflict in the first place. He highlights the importance of the cooperative efforts of many segments of society, from the public and technologists to militarists and decision-makers. He implies that it is criminal negligence to leave everything to automation processes or politicians. Therefore, Future Peace also lays out long to short term recommendations to maintain peace and reverse the rush to war.

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Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Norms by Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022) Book cover

utonomous features are not a matter of the future; they have been used in warfare for years. However, it is quite evident that with the advancement of technology and the weaponization of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems are swiftly adapting and becoming accepted.

As these changes emerge, the question that is often raised by international organizations such as the UN, which set the norms of conduct in an effort to control and regulate the use of autonomous weapons, is “How will human beings maintain control of the use of autonomous weapons?” In their study, Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss flip the script to reveal another perspective of this dynamic.

Bode and Huelss aim to explain how testing, developing, and using weapons systems with autonomous features shapes ethical and legal norms, and how standards manifest and change in practice. The authors also examine the consequences of autonomous weapons for international relations.

Bode and Huelss acknowledge the fear and risks that these developments bring but adopt the approach that autonomous weapon systems may push people away from taking immediate decisions on the use of force as norms adapt to the appropriate use of force.

In short, Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Norms analyses the normative repercussions of weaponizing artificial intelligence by examining them not as tools used by the military but as shaping forces. Chapters include “Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Relations,” “New Technologies of Warfare: Emergence and Regulation,” “International Law, Norms, and Order,” “Norms in International Relations,” and “How Autonomous Weapons Systems Make Norms,” and contain assisting tables and figures.

As the trend and debate of autonomizing weapons systems continues, Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Norms equips the reader with an understanding of the relation of human-machine interaction and the process of integrating new technologies into war.

War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future by Roberto J. González (University of California Press, 2022) Book cover

n War Virtually, Roberto J. González takes the reader behind the scenes to expose how scientists, programmers, and engineers developed technologies that automate war, predict conflict, and regulate human thought and behavior. Does this sound utopian? Not so when you factor in the persistent drive to arm for virtual warfare. In this quest, data comes a valuable commodity.

González evaluates autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, advanced surveillance programs, and psyops techniques. He examines the foundation of the latest version of warfare in order to explain how it has taken its current form through contemporary military operations and their high-tech and cultural underpinnings.

However, War Virtually transcends the design, innovative, and transformative aspects of technology and warfare, and touches upon human engineering. González reveals the relations between U.S. intelligence agencies and Big Tech, and its implications. It is no secret that algorithms construct behavioral models for anticipating or even predicting human behavior, and, therefore, all of us risk having our digital lives become part of the military-industrial economy.

Adopting a critical approach, González examines how the U.S. military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare, and questions the notion that technological advancements will lead to more efficient and less destructive warfare. In fact, he implies that such an aspiration comes at a great cost, and argues that in this world, there is little room for hubris.

War Virtually covers a large array of topics including automated battlefield robotics, social scientists’ involvement in experimental defense research, the blurred line between political consulting and propaganda in the internet era, and the military’s use of big data to craft new counterinsurgency methods based on predicting conflict.

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Proto-Algorithmic War: How the Iraq War Became a Laboratory for Algorithmic Logics by Stefka Hristova (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) Book cover

n Proto-Algorithmic War, Stefka Hristova offers a unique perspective on the Iraq War and the history of algorithmic and digital logic that came to be a crucial element of today’s warfare. She examines the military policy of the United States going into the Iraq War: the U.S. approached the war with the logic of digital and emerging algorithmic technology alongside the preceding numerical logics of the British Mandate in Iraq. In a sense, the Iraq War became an experiment in the early stages of development and utilization of such technology in warfare, and moreover war culture.

Hristova provides a case study of a comparative historical framework reaching back to the quantification techniques harnessed during the era of Mandatory Iraq (1918-1932) and analyzes the parallels and diversions between the numerical logics in both cases.

The author further evaluates the logic that moved beyond the British mandate for Iraq and reduced culture, society, and the physical body and environment into visual data-driven, sterilized, reproducible warfare, highlighting that it lacked cultural and historical context. Indeed, the actual experience of the Iraq War resulted in massive-scale death and destruction.

Proto-Algorithmic War offers an insight into the digitization and automation of war. Hristova aptly scrutinizes the ways in which the Iraq War attempted and often failed to see and incorporate population and territory as digital and further proto-algorithmic entities.

The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie (MIT Press, 2022) Book cover

en Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie use fire as an analogy to showcase how AI has a dual nature: destructive and constructive. Just like our distant ancestors learning to operate their newly discovered, full of potential tool, our responsibility is to understand and use AI potential wisely. With AI revolutionizing the world, democracies have a responsibility to harness that power constructively and come out on top. Transformation is on its way—can humanity use AI to light the way? Or will the fire burn wildly and ignite a new type of war?

In The New Fire, Buchanan and Imbrie help us understand AI better by breaking it down into its “sparks,” which are data, algorithms, and computing power. They further explain the tangible and potentially destructive consequences of these sparks such as disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons.

On a larger scale, The New Fire shows the urgency of democracies to adapt to the powerful tool that is AI, as autocrats may use it for domestic centralized control and asymmetric advantages in combat. In that sense, they argue that harnessing the power of AI is crucial for holding democracy in balance in the world. The New Fire also acknowledges that democracies have a harder time adapting to the age of AI given ethical and civil concerns, but that new ways could be forged based on the advantages of democracy.

Drawing on examples from geopolitical competition and its analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy while respecting civil rights. In the age of AI, this crucial topic may determine the choice of course between war and peace.

Written by Dilara Özer

The post Five Books on How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming the Conduct of War appeared first on Politics Today.

Greece Accuses Turkey to Gloss Over Its Violations of International Law

Politics Today — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:04:40 +0000

n October 15, Greece accused Turkey of abusing 92 migrants discovered naked and injured close to the Meriç River (Evros River), which serves as a natural border between the two countries.

The UNHCR demanded an urgent investigation and called the incident shocking, declaring that the images of the migrants were deeply distressing.

The Greek police stated that their investigation together with Frontex, the EU’s border agency, found evidence that the migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece in rubber dinghies.

It was claimed that the migrants had been forced by Turkish authorities to board three vehicles that took them to the border, and forcibly stripped naked before being placed in dinghies.

However, a recently leaked report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) raises concerns about systematic misconduct from both the Greek border and coast guard authorities and Frontex.

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Greek and Turkish officials exchange accusations

Notis Mitarachi, the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, said that Turkey’s behavior exceeds all limits. On October 16, he tweeted, “Turkey’s behavior towards 92 migrants whom we rescued at the borders today is a shame for civilization.” “We expect Ankara to investigate the incident and protect, at last, its border with the EU.”

Ibrahim Çataklı, Deputy Interior Minister of Turkey, replied to the tweet as follows, “As you couldn’t find one single case of a human rights violation by Turkey, you just seek to expose the image of your own cruelty as if Turkey did it.”

The Turkish Presidency’s Director of Communications Fahrettin Altun responded a day later with a series of tweets saying the allegations were “groundless and unfounded” with the intention of “putting our country under suspicion” and that “Greece once again showed the whole world that it does not even respect the dignity of these oppressed people, by publishing the photographs of the refugees it has deported, extorting their personal belongings.”

On October 17, Mitarachi claimed that Turkey deliberately directed immigrants across the EU border as migration has become a sensitive topic for the upcoming 2023 elections in Turkey.

He told the Greek-based channel SKAI TV that Turkey is in a very difficult position because these 92 people were found by Frontex itself which confirmed the incident.

Read: Can the Greek Strategy of Counterbalancing Turkey Work?

Turkey denies the claims

Turkey’s Ministry of Internal Affairs released a lengthy statement. In the statement, the ministry claimed that Greece was desperate on account of its inhumane treatment of migrants being made public by Turkish officials.

“It is very apparent that Greece is trying to cover up the systematic unlawful pushbacks they have been doing routinely by confiscating all the belongings of the migrants including their money, phones, IDs, and passports, throwing them into the sea, by taking all their clothing and shoes, battering them naked with batons, injuring them with electro-shock devices, shooting at them with rubber bullets or putting them on worn-out lifeboats,” the Turkish ministry said in the statement.

It added that these incidents have been documented in images and reports.

“Just last month they punctured the boat of a group of migrants including babies and infants who were trying to reach Italy from Lebanon. Having lost all their valuables, these people were left to die,” the ministry stated.

The statement also highlights that Athens is under pressure due to its violations of international law, and that a report by OLAF found abuse, irregularities, and cover-ups by the EU border agency, Frontex.

“Within this context, we underline that the fact that the Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum still holds his office and continues his baseless allegations against our country, whereas the Executive Director of Frontex was discharged from his position during the investigations and supervisions on the pushbacks, is unacceptable and we leave this to the discretion of the public opinion.”

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Greek violations have become “an entrenched practice”

On October 14, a report by OLAF was leaked, in which it found individuals at Frontex, the European border and coast guard, complicit in pushbacks violating migrants’ “fundamental rights” and in partaking in misconduct.

The report shows that Frontex in collaboration with the Greek government mishandled and failed to report or investigate pushback accusations and evidence.

The investigation was conducted with information from open sources, media reports, documents from Frontex and the European Commission as well as interviews with 20 witnesses.

“OLAF concludes, based on the evidence collected during the investigation, that the allegations are proven,” the report reads. Frontex stated that it took remedial action and did not refute the accusations.

Human rights NGOs and leading media outlets have frequently reported the Greek pushbacks and other human rights breaches that violate international law.

A 2021 Amnesty report found that Greek human rights violations have become “an entrenched practice.” It revealed that especially in the Meriç (Evros) region, Greece used excessive violence against immigrants and refugees in February and March 2020.

Around 61,800 migrants have been pushed back by Greek authorities since 2020, 152 of which lost their lives, while 200 were injured, according to the Turkish Ministry of Interior Affairs.

Turkey regularly accuses Greece of violently pushing back migrants before they can file asylum claims, while Greece accuses Turkey of pushing forward migrants to pressure and destabilize the EU. Meanwhile, tensions remain high between the fallen-out neighbors due to issues such as maritime border altercations and Greece’s armament of the Aegean islands.

Written by Dilara Özer

The post Greece Accuses Turkey to Gloss Over Its Violations of International Law appeared first on Politics Today.

Who Is Guilty of War Crimes in Ukraine?

Politics Today — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 10:44:33 +0000

Could Russian President Vladimir Putin be prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine? What about Russian military commanders and ordinary Russian soldiers? On the other side, could Ukraine President Volodmyr Zelensky, Ukrainian commanders or ordinary Ukrainian soldiers be prosecuted?

These questions have taken on increased urgency as Russia’s military action in Ukraine promises to continue for an extended period of time. To answer these questions, one must ask, first, what constitutes a crime in warfare. And second, if crimes are committed, is there a court that can actually prosecute and impose punishment.

The rules of war apply to all those who participate in war, from soldiers on the ground to the top commanders. They may lawfully kill people on the other side, but they may not kill civilians. If they take captives, they must treat them humanely. It matters not who started a war. Once a war begins, the rules apply equally to both sides.

Eyes on Russia

In the current hostilities in Ukraine, most attention has been on crimes that may have been committed on the Russian side. It is the Russian army that has taken action resulting in the deaths of at least several thousand Ukrainians. Bombardment by long-range missiles has resulted in many deaths. If bombardment is intended to harm civilians, then it is a crime.

Even if not intended to harm civilians, it is a crime if done “in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.” That is wording from the Statute of the International Criminal Court, the court established twenty years ago in the Hague to prosecute persons who commit war crimes and other internationally defined offenses.

The recent bombing of a rail station in the city of Kramatorsk similarly appears to be an attack on a civilian objective. Investigators must determine whether the rail station was targeted intentionally, or whether the attack could have been aimed at some military objective in the vicinity. So far, no such evidence has appeared. Even if the Kramatorsk rail station was hit accidentally, it might still be a war crime on the basis that care was not taken to avoid hitting civilians.

So if a missile is launched against a military target, such an attack is unlawful if civilians are nearby and can be expected to be hit. Images from Ukraine circulating in the media show apartment buildings destroyed by missile attack. On the face of it, such attacks seem to be unlawful. Even if Ukrainian fighters are present in an apartment building, the harm to others is so predictable that an attack is not lawful.

One hospital was bombed by a Russian missile attack in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. On the face of it, this appears to be an unlawful attack. There was some information, however, that this hospital had been taken over by a Ukrainian military unit and was not at the time functioning as a hospital. This is the kind of situation that must be investigated to determine if a war crime was committed.

Read: The Montreux Convention and the Russia-Ukraine War

There are allegations about acts of Russian soldiers in areas they have captured, like the town of Bucha near Kyiv. Civilians were apparently killed during the time the Russian army was in occupation. Investigators are working to find evidence as to how civilians were killed in Bucha and in other towns under Russian occupation.

It must be determined first whether they were killed by Russians. If that is the case, it must be determined whether the killings were carried out by Russian soldiers at their own initiative, or whether Russian commanders ordered or condoned the killings. If that is so, then commanders too would be guilty of war crimes.

Ukraine’s responsibility

On the Ukrainian side, its army is not causing damage on a similar scale against the Russians. It is directing its fire against the Russian military. So any prosecution of Ukrainian leadership figures is unlikely. The situation in which crimes have been alleged against Ukrainian personnel involve Russian captives, for example, shooting Russian prisoners in the knee. If prisoners are abused, this is a war crime. If commanders condone such abuse, they too are guilty.

The importance of all this law on war crimes is that it lets everyone know that they might be held accountable. Actual accountability, however, is far from certain. Sometimes the authorities of an army prosecute their own personnel. Sometimes prosecutions are undertaken by authorities of an opposing army. Sometimes they are undertaken by prosecutors in states that are not directly involved. Recently, Syrians alleged to have committed war crimes in the Syrian civil war have been prosecuted in Germany.

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The International Criminal Court

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, a British lawyer named Karim Khan, has opened an investigation into possible crimes committed in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court focuses on high-level personnel. Khan is not likely to indict ground troops. Indictments against Russian commanders, particularly for bombardment of civilians, appear a serious possibility, however. The prosecutor may be able to identify particular commanders responsible for particular missile strikes. Under the court’s procedures, even cabinet ministers and presidents can be indicted.

The International Criminal Court does actually try persons and sentences them to prison. The court does not have its own prisons, but different countries house prisoners on the court’s behalf. The difficulty for the International Criminal Court is to gain custody in order to conduct a trial. The court does not try anyone in their absence. If Russian commanders, or even top civilian leaders are indicted, the Russian government is unlikely to surrender them.

States that are party to the International Criminal Court, however, have an obligation to surrender persons who are under indictment. Over one hundred states are parties. Anyone under indictment who travels to such a state risks arrest.

The United States: double standards?

The United States has been publicly accusing the Russian military and civilian leadership of war crimes. Last year, when the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor opened an investigation that may result in prosecution of Israeli officials over Israel’s unlawful settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, the United States criticized the prosecutor. Israel is not a party to the International Criminal Court, and the United States stated its view that there is no legal basis to prosecute nationals of a state that is not a party.

Russia, similar to Israel, is not a party. So, by the U.S. logic, there should be no prosecution of Russian nationals. The United States did not criticize Khan, however, for opening an investigation that may lead to prosecution of Russian nationals. The United States thus is open to an accusation of double standards.

Ukraine too finds itself in an awkward legal position. Like Russia, Ukraine is not a party to the International Criminal Court. Technically, the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to prosecute for war crimes committed in Ukraine, because Ukraine has taken advantage of a special provision that allows a state that is not a party to the court to give the court the right to prosecute for crimes in its territory.

However, since Ukraine is not a party, if Ukrainians were to commit war crimes in a foreign country, they could not be prosecuted. So Ukraine is asking for Russians to be prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine, while Ukrainians cannot be prosecuted by the court for war crimes they might commit in other countries.

The post Who Is Guilty of War Crimes in Ukraine? appeared first on Politics Today.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine from an International Law Perspective

Politics Today — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:24:19 +0000

International law is the branch of law that regulates how states will act in their bilateral relations, drawing the boundaries of their rights and responsibilities. However, the absence of effective mechanisms to enforce the rules of international law, especially against powerful states, apparently renders them ineffective. The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good example, showing the limits of implementing international law. Tensions between Russia and Ukraine since 2014 did not prevent the occupation of Ukrainian land and eventually an all-out war between the two countries.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 and was ruled by governments closer to Russia until 2014. However, as a result of popular movements, a pro-Western and pro-European Union government came to power in February 2014. The Russian response to this was critical. The Parliament of Crimea, then an autonomous region of Ukraine, decided to conduct a referendum under the influence of Russia via Crimeans of Russian origin, and events ended up with a Russian invasion and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

In April 2014, in the Donbas region of Ukraine, which is located in the east of Ukraine and densely populated by people of Russian origin, two political entities named “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic” proclaimed their breakaway from Ukraine. This step foreshadowed what was to come. Eight years later and in February again, Russia wanted to replicate the annexation of Crimea. Russia launched a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine on the morning of February 24, 2022 – an operation that continues to this moment.

Read: What Does the Current Ukraine Crisis Mean for Stockholm?

Does Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine have any legal ground?

Russia perceives Ukraine’s getting closer to NATO and the West as a major security threat, and argues that Western European countries and the U.S. intervene in Ukraine’s internal politics in order to bring pro-Western governments to power. According to Russian claims, this is anti-democratic and violates human rights, and therefore Russia voices its motive for the invasion as ending the government of Ukraine’s “anti-democratic” rule.

Going even further, Russia claims that the United States and Western European countries have been trying to create a nuclear Ukraine on its border. Overall, it is well-known that Russia perceives Ukraine as part of “its” territory and believes that it should “return” to Russia.

Russia sent its troops initially to eastern Ukraine under the argument of deploying a “peacekeeping force” upon the invitation of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. This was immediately followed by a large-scale military invasion. Russia’s main argument for sending military troops is the request for “self-defense” by Donetsk and Luhansk.

Read: How Will the New China-Russia Gas Deal Affect the Ukraine Crisis?

The Ukrainian government, as a sovereign nation state, opted to cooperate with the European Union and NATO. In fact, they have long been worried about Russia’s possible incursion and, as a result, have set NATO membership as one of their major foreign policy goals. The Ukrainian government expects this preference to be respected in accordance with international law.

Ukraine is a legitimate and sovereign state, and sizeable parts of its territories are subject to Russian intervention and occupation.

Since 2014, Ukraine has been struggling to object to the annexation of Crimea by Russia through political, legal and de facto means. Ukraine is a legitimate and sovereign state, and sizeable parts of its territories, first Crimea and now the Donbas region, which is dominated by separatist movements, are subject to Russian intervention and occupation.

Since the right to self-determination is a right granted by international law only to colonized communities, the self-declarations of independence in Donetsk and Luhansk are not legitimate under Ukrainian national law or international law. This principle manifests explicitly that there is no legitimate state in the eastern Ukraine that Russia or any other state can recognize.

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Can the UN deter Russia?

In order to justify its recognition of self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia has asserted that the Ukrainian government has committed “anti-democratic acts and human rights violations.” However, this is not legitimate justification for violating the territorial integrity of a state.

The principle of “respect for the political independence and territorial integrity of states by all other states” is a basic principle of international law articulated in Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations accepted by all states today. For this reason, all direct or indirect activity by Russia is a clear breach and violation of this basic principle.

It was rather foreseeable that the UN Security Council, in which Russia has a veto power, cannot act against the Russian invasion. In this situation, wherein the Security Council cannot decide to keep the peace, the UN General Assembly can recommend measures against Russia by taking a decision to “unite for peace” as in the case of the Korean War. This could help further strengthen the existing sanctions against Russia.

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With or without a UN General Assembly resolution, other states can use armed forces to support the exercise of Ukraine’s right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which regulates the right to self-defense and provides that this right can be exercised by the attacked state alone or with the active assistance of other states. That is to say, with or without a UN resolution, all other countries, including NATO members, can provide assistance, including military, to Ukraine as they see appropriate.

The remaining issue is how to stop the fighting. This war could be stopped either via the options presented by international law to states or via diplomatic channels in the form of negotiations between the relevant sides. The choice between these two is a political matter. In any case, the next step will be determining and prosecuting all those who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The post Russian Invasion of Ukraine from an International Law Perspective appeared first on Politics Today.

Apartheid Reports Brand Israel as Criminal Enterprise

Politics Today — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 12:18:47 +0000

Amnesty International’s February 1 report on apartheid in Israel puts the spotlight on Israel’s character as a state. The report comes at a crucial juncture in international scrutiny of Israel for its original takeover of Palestine’s territory, its expulsion of Arab population, and its erection of a discriminatory legal order.

Coming on the heels of similar analyses by Human Rights Watch and by the Israeli rights organization B’tselem, the Amnesty International report does not simply point to violations of various human rights. Instead, it focuses on the totality of violations to show Israel to be a criminal enterprise. That orientation is reflected in the report’s title, “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.”

The point of all three reports is that the aim of Israel’s government is unlawful domination of the Arab population. B’tselem was the first, with its January 2021 report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” Amnesty International followed in April 2021 with a report headed “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.”

Now comes Amnesty International, confirming this analysis with its own research. Its report may have more impact, if only because Amnesty International enjoys more international visibility than the other two groups. Amnesty International is often cited by the United States as an authoritative source when the U.S. State Department criticizes other governments for violating rights. The importance of the Amnesty International report, however, lies less in the organization’s status than in the fact that one now has three major rights organizations arriving at the same conclusion about Israel.

The Amnesty International report has been condemned by Israel’s government, which denies the report’s characterization of the country. The report was labeled as “false, biased and anti-Semitic” by Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

The vehemence of this retort can be explained by the fact that the conclusion reached by the three human rights organizations may have serious consequences for Israel. Apartheid is a crime for which perpetrators may be prosecuted and jailed. The timing of the Amnesty International report is important, coming after the hostilities between Israel and Gaza of May 2021.

Read: The Evolution of Apartheid: Why Israel is Becoming a Pariah State

That concurrence matters because in July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed a three-member commission of inquiry to examine crimes committed in connection with those hostilities. The Human Rights Council wants to know not only about crimes in the immediate hostilities, but about crimes related to what it called the “root causes” of those hostilities.

The Human Rights Council is leaving it up to the commission of inquiry to ascertain just what those “root causes” were. It is asking the commission not only to collect data but to identify individual perpetrators. The commission is tasked to prepare criminal dossiers on persons who might be subject to being indicted. Apartheid is a crime that falls under the broader crime category “crimes against humanity,” prosecutable in the International Criminal Court.

Importantly, the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor is currently investigating international crimes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. To date, the Prosecutor has not inquired into apartheid, but the three reports give him a solid basis to orient his investigation in that direction.

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The three reports provide an opening for Palestine advocacy organizations, in particular because of the formation of the commission of inquiry. Palestine advocacy organizations can propose to the commission of inquiry a variety of Israeli policies as “root causes” of the 2021 Gaza-Israel conflict. Perhaps the most important one is Israel’s refusal to offer repatriation to the Arab families expelled from their home areas in Palestine in 1948. Given that the majority of Gaza’s inhabitants are from families that were expelled in 1948, the refusal to allow repatriation qualifies as a “root cause” of the May 2021 hostilities.

The perpetrators of the 1948 expulsions of Arab families are no longer living, so they cannot be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. But their successors who deny repatriation to those Arab families occupy high positions in Israel. Their denial of repatriation qualifies as a “crime against humanity” as defined by the International Criminal Court. Human Rights Watch in its report calls the refusal to repatriate “persecution” and “apartheid,” both of which are sub-categories of “crime against humanity” in the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The commission of inquiry has just now formed and has issued a “terms of reference” document to guide its work. Commission of Inquiry The commission is asking the public to submit information. Information can be submitted in English, Arabic, or Hebrew. In its “terms of reference,” the commission provides an upload feature to submit information. It also provides an e-mail address for questions about how to submit information.

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Ever since 1948, the United Nations has called on Israel to repatriate persons displaced in that year. However, no concrete action has been taken by the international community to force Israel to comply. Now for the first time an international procedure has opened whereby Israeli officials responsible for Israel’s policy of denying repatriation can be brought to account. The commission of inquiry will be cooperating with the International Criminal Court, preparing criminal dossiers that the Court’s Prosecutor can use to prepare indictments.

Apart from whether any actual indictments are ever issued by the International Criminal Court for denial of repatriation, advocacy efforts in that direction hold the prospect of changing the discourse around the 1948 Nakba and the entire Palestine issue. Repatriation will come to be seen not simply as an agenda item for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Instead, the Israeli officials who refuse to repatriate will be seen as criminals.

The commission of inquiry is made up of three members, who have already been appointed. All three are seasoned human rights advocates. All three are well schooled in the history behind the establishment of Israel. The three human rights organizations in their reports have provided solid factual information that is now available to the commission. What could be particularly compelling for the commission is submissions from Palestinians who are from families that were forced out of their home areas in 1948.

Such submissions will make clear that the crime of denial of repatriation has real victims. Submissions could explain the circumstances under which the family left in 1948. Submissions could explain the hardships their families encountered subsequently. For those whose place of refuge is Gaza, submissions could include information about the quality of life in Gaza, and why the flow of large numbers of Palestine Arabs into Gaza in 1948 is a “root cause” of the hostilities of May 2021.

The post Apartheid Reports Brand Israel as Criminal Enterprise appeared first on Politics Today.

The ICC vs. Israel: Three Main Scenarios

Politics Today — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 09:37:51 +0000

On March 22, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, declared that “the time has come to stop Israel’s blatant impunity”. His remarks were included in a letter sent to the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and other top officials at the international body.

There is modest – albeit cautious – optimism among Palestinians that Israeli officials could potentially be held accountable for war crimes and other human rights violations in Palestine. The reason behind this optimism is a recent decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue its investigation of alleged war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Mansour’s letter was written with this context in mind. Other Palestinian officials, such as Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, are also pushing in this direction. He, too, wants to see an end to Israel’s lack of accountability.

Thus far, the Israeli response has been most predictable. On March 20, Israeli authorities decided to revoke Al-Maliki’s special travel permit in order to prevent him from pursuing Palestinian diplomacy that aims at ensuring the continuation of the ICC investigation. Al-Maliki had, in fact, just returned from a trip to The Hague, where the ICC is headquartered.

Furthermore, Israel is openly attempting to intimidate the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to discontinue its cooperation with the ICC, as can be easily gleaned from the official Israeli discourse. “The Palestinian leadership has to understand there are consequences for their actions,” an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on March 21.

On April 30, 2020, Bensouda consulted with the Court’s Pre-trial Chamber regarding whether the ICC had jurisdiction over the matter.

Despite years of legal haggling and intense pressure on the ICC’s outgoing Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to scrap the investigation altogether, the legal proceedings have carried on, unhindered. The pressure was displayed in various forms: direct defamation by Israel, as in accusing the ICC of anti-Semitism; unprecedented American sanctions on ICC officials and constant meddling and intervention, on Israel’s behalf, by member States that are part of the ICC, and who are described as amici curiae.

They did not succeed. On April 30, 2020, Bensouda consulted with the Court’s Pre-trial Chamber regarding whether the ICC had jurisdiction over the matter. Ten months later, the Chamber answered in the affirmative. Subsequently, the Prosecutor decided to formally open the investigation.

On March 9, a spokesman for the Court revealed that, in accordance to Article 18 in the Rome Statute, notification letters were sent by the Prosecutor’s office to ‘all parties concerned’, including the Israeli Government and the Palestinian leadership, notifying them of the war crimes probe and allowing them only one month to seek deferral of the investigation.

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Expectedly, Israel remains defiant. However, unlike its obstinacy in response to previous international attempts at investigating war crimes allegations in Palestine, the Israeli response, this time, appears confused and uncertain. On the one hand, Israeli media revealed last July that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has prepared a long list of likely Israeli suspects, whose conduct can potentially be investigated by the ICC. Still, the official Israeli response can only be described as dismissive of the matter as being superfluous, insisting that Israel will not, in any way, cooperate with ICC investigators.

Though the Israeli government continues to maintain its official position that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel and occupied Palestine, top Israeli officials and diplomats are moving quickly to block what now seems to be an imminent probe. For example, Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, was on an official visit to Germany where he, on March 18, met with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, thanking him on behalf of Israel for opposing the ICC’s investigation of Israeli officials.

After lashing out at the Palestinian leadership for attempting to “legalize” the conflict, through an international investigation, Rivlin renewed Israel’s “trust that our European friends will stand by us in the important fight on the misuse of the International Criminal Court against our soldiers and civilians.”

Unlike previous attempts at investigating Israeli war crimes, for example the Jenin massacre in the West Bank in 2002, and the various investigations of several Israeli wars on Gaza starting in 2008-09, the forthcoming ICC investigation is different. For one, the ICC investigation targets individuals, not states, and can issue arrest warrants, making it legally incumbent on all other ICC members to enforce the Court’s decisions.

Read: ICC Probe in Palestine Brings Some Hope to the Palestinians at Last

Now that all attempts at dissuading the Court from pursuing the matter have failed, the question must be asked: What are the possible future scenarios?

Scenario 1: Expanding the Scope of Investigation

In the case that the investigation carries on as planned, the Prosecutor’s next step would be to identify suspects and alleged perpetrators of war crimes. Dr. Triestino Mariniello, member of the legal team that represents the Gaza victims, told me that once these suspects have been determined, “the Prosecutor will ask the Pre-trial chamber to issue either arrest warrants or subpoena, at least in relation to the crimes already included in the investigation so far.”

These alleged war crimes already include Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014 and Israel’s targeting of unarmed civilian protesters during Gaza’s Great March of Return, starting in 2018.

Even more ideally, the Court could potentially widen the scope of the investigation, which is a major demand for the representatives of the Palestinian victims.

“We expect more crimes to be included: especially, apartheid as a crime against humanity and crimes against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli authorities, especially torture,” according to Dr. Mariniello.

In essence, this means that, even after the investigation is officially underway, the Palestine legal team can continue its advocacy to expand the scope of the investigation and to cover as much legal ground as possible.

Scenario 2: Narrow Scope of Investigation

However, judging from previous historic experiences, ideal scenarios in cases where Israel was investigated for war crimes rarely transpired. A less than ideal scenario would be for the scope of the investigation to remain narrow.

In a recent interview with former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories, Professor Richard Falk, he told me that even if the narrow scope remains in effect – thus reducing the chances of all victims seeing justice – the investigation is still a “breakthrough”.

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The reason why the investigation may not be broadened has less to do with justice and much to do with politics. “The scope of the investigation is something that is ill-defined, so it is a matter of political discretion,” Professor Falk said.

In other words, “the Court takes a position that needs to be cautious about delimiting its jurisdiction and, therefore, it tries to narrow the scope of what it is prepared to investigate.”

Professor Falk does not agree with that view but, according to the seasoned international law expert, “it does represent the fact that the ICC, like the UN itself, is subject to immense geopolitical pressure.”

Still, “it’s a breakthrough even to consider the investigation, let alone the indictment and the prosecution of either Israelis or Americans that was put on the agenda of the ICC, which led to a pushback by these governments.”

Scenario 3: Deferrals and Delays

While the two above scenarios are suitable for Palestinians, they are a non-starter as far as the Israeli government is concerned. While Israel remains largely silent about its counter-strategies, one of the options at its disposal is to face the fact and to cooperate with the Court, not for the sake of achieving major justice but to simply delay the process indefinitely.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, international law expert Nick Kaufman advises Israel to cooperate, only for the sake of obtaining a “deferral” from the Court and to use the ensuing delay for political maneuvering.

“It would be unfortunate for Israel to miss the opportunity of deferral which could provide the ideal excuse for reinitiating peace talks with the Palestinians,” he wrote, warning that “if Israel squanders such an opportunity it should come as no surprise if, at a later date, the Court will hint that the government has no one but itself to blame for the export of the judicial process to The Hague.”

There are other scenarios and more are likely to arise as a result of backdoor dealings and intense discussions involving Israel and its benefactors, whether in Washington or among the amici curiae at the Court itself.

At the same time, while Palestinians remain cautious about the future of the investigation, hope is slowly rising that, this time around, things may be different and that Israeli war criminals will eventually be held accountable for their crimes. Time will tell.

(Romana Rubeo contributed to this article)

The post The ICC vs. Israel: Three Main Scenarios appeared first on Politics Today.

From Afghanistan to Palestine: ICC Tackles Politically Charged Cases

Politics Today — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 03:21:34 +0000

The International Criminal Court is taking a visible role in dealing with war crimes, to the plaudits of victims, and to the horror of perpetrators. These initiatives have brought a nervous reaction in Washington, which has been trying to undermine the court ever since it was created. Two situations in particular are justifying to Washington the fears it has felt about the court all along.

The court’s prosecutor is beginning an investigation of the interrogations conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency at clandestine detention facilities popularly known as “black sites” it operated in various countries in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. At the same time, the prosecutor is beginning an investigation that could lead to prosecution of officials of America’s ally Israel over Israel’s wars in Gaza and its civilian settlements in Palestine territory.

Both investigations have brought sharp rebukes from the White House. The Afghanistan investigation could reach to the highest levels of Washington officialdom of the 2002-2003 era. The interrogations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency are universally acknowledged to have constituted torture.

Even former President Barack Obama has said that techniques like “water-boarding” are torture. And a committee of the United States Senate issued a report detailing the use of such techniques. So the prosecutor will not have a difficult time showing torture.

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Torture is one of the acts defined to be a war crime in the court’s statute. And to the dismay of Washington, the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate, because some of the “black sites” happened to be in the territory of states that have signed up to the International Criminal Court. That gives the court jurisdiction to investigate.

That also highlights the main criticism the United States has of the court. The U.S. Government takes the position that the International Criminal Court should have jurisdiction only over persons who are nationals of states that sign up to the court, that is, unless the U.N. Security Council decides that a particular situation merits investigation.

The Security Council can refer a situation to the prosecutor for investigation. Of course, the United States has control over such referrals, because it wields a veto in the Security Council to stop any referral it opposes. And the United States has not signed up to the court, so the prosecutor doesn’t have jurisdiction over U.S. persons in that way.

However, the court does have jurisdiction if war crimes are committed in the territory of a state that has signed up, three states in which the Central Intelligence Agency operated “black sites” are among them: Poland, Lithuania, and Romania. In each of the three, the United States made an arrangement with the government to let it fly in persons detained in Afghanistan. In each of the three, the government let the Central Intelligence Agency have a facility it could use for interrogations. None of the sites were publicly disclosed.

Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), meets Vice president of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo in Khartoum, Sudan on October 18, 2020. Photo by Mahmoud Hjaj, Anadolu Images

The interrogation techniques were approved at the highest level of government in the United States. The International Criminal Court focuses on high-level officials who set policy for the commission of war crimes. So top officials from the 2002-2003 period could be in the prosecutor’s cross hairs.

When President Obama took office, he said that no one would be prosecuted for the interrogation practices, even though they constituted torture. That opens the way to prosecution at the International Criminal Court. If prosecutions occur in a particular country, the International Criminal Court backs off. But Obama’s refusal to prosecute means there is no obstacle to prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

The other situation that is causing consternation in Washington is an investigation of war crimes in Palestine territory that could lead to prosecution of top Israeli officials. Here too the jurisdictional rules are key. Palestine has signed up to the International Criminal Court.

That means that war crimes in its territory can be investigated. One of the acts that is defined by the court as a war crime is the transfer of civilians into settlements in territory under belligerent occupation. Israel does not disguise the fact that it promotes settlements in the West Bank territory of Palestine. The prosecutor has said that this action involves war crimes committed by Israeli officials.

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Read: ICC Probe in Palestine Brings Some Hope to the Palestinians at Last

Within recent weeks, the Israeli government has warned many of its highest-level officials that they may be indicted by the International Criminal Court. The United States has already criticized the court over the Palestine investigation. That criticism came in February, when the court confirmed that the prosecutor may proceed with investigations.

These two investigations are far from the only ones now in process at the court. Myanmar officials, for example, may find themselves indicted for the treatment of members of Myanmar’s Rohingya population. But the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction everywhere. It does not have jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the territory of states that have not signed up to the court. For that reasons, the International Criminal Court has not become a truly international court. A number of major countries have stayed out of the court’s jurisdiction by refusing to join.

The fact that major states have declined to join feeds the criticism levelled by the United States that the International Criminal Court practices selective justice. But the selection is not made by the court’s prosecutor. It is made by the countries that decline to join. The only way the International Criminal Court can fully counter the criticism is if other states decide to join. Those states would, of course, be opening the possibility that their own officials could be prosecuted. And that is why they do not join.

The investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine may lead some of these countries to re-consider and to join the court. The court’s prosecutor has not been overly vindictive. She has been careful to prosecute only where clear war crimes are committed.

Officials who stay on the right side of the law have nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court. On the contrary, prosecution of war crimes by the International Criminal Court raises the prospect of suppressing the atrocities that have been all too common in the international and civil wars of recent years.

One could list numerous examples of war crimes that have gone unpunished. The International Criminal Court aims less at those who commit war crimes at the tactical level than at those who occupy high military or civilian positions who set the policy that allows for war crimes at the tactical level. Universal acceptance by the countries of the world of the International Criminal Court would have a salutary effect.

VIDEO: Situation in Palestine: Statement of the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda

The post From Afghanistan to Palestine: ICC Tackles Politically Charged Cases appeared first on Politics Today.

The Gulf of Guinea: A New Strain of Piracy

Politics Today — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 11:58:48 +0000

The Gulf of Guinea is a large nautical zone that traverses over 6,000 kilometers of coastline, containing a number of islands near West and Central Africa. It’s an important maritime route for commercial shipping lines from Europe and America to West, Central, and Southern Africa.

The Gulf of Guinea records over 90% of global crew kidnapping, piracy, and sea robbery. The latter have increased by 50% with 121 crew members abducted in 2019 compared to 78 in 2018. The kidnapping of the crews is not just a phenomenon faced by one type of ships: all types of vessels have been targeted at various sites from the coast.

Maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea frequently occurs in Apapa, Brass, Bonny Island, and Port Harcourt of Nigeria. There have been reported attacks in Benin’s anchorage, Cameroon’s Idenao and Doula, Ghana’s Takoradi, Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan, Guinea’s Conakry and Equatorial Guinea axis, the port of Lomé in Togo, and Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo and its surroundings.

Piracy acts continue to rise exponentially, owning to petro-piracy, corruption in governance, unemployment, and the proliferation of sophisticated arms. According to the 2020 annual report by the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau (IMB), the Gulf of Guinea recorded the highest number of crew kidnappings in 2020.

Read: Piracy and the Global Military Presence in the Gulf of Aden

Unemployment and poverty, compounded by weak law enforcement and corruption are the main factors that allow maritime piracy to prosper in the Gulf of Guinea. The most common form of piracy in the gulf and the most common armed robbery at sea is the hijacking of ships, with a focus on kidnappings and ransom payments.

In addition, the Gulf of Guinea’s oil boom has triggered attacks to steal crude oil from tankers and pipelines in order to transfer them illegally to refineries, thus adversely affecting the local economy as well as the environment. The Nigerian Navy is the largest on the coast of West Africa, but still lacks ability to tackle insecurity and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

The Niger Delta, one of the richest regions in Africa, has been turned into the most underdeveloped and polluted environment in the world.

The Niger Delta is an oil-rich region in Nigeria which has the largest natural gas reserve in Africa and has been generating 90% of Nigeria’s revenues for almost five decades. The oil explorations in the Niger Delta led to a disastrous impact on the diverse ecosystem of mangrove swamps, rain forests, and marine life resulting in contaminated rivers, environmental pollution, grinding poverty, gross corruption, and high drilling cost by multinational oil companies.

Only well-connected individuals benefit from oil production. The Niger Delta, one of the richest regions in Africa, has been turned into the most underdeveloped and polluted environment in the world.

These injustices aroused protest and activism from the inhabitants of the Niger Delta in the late 80s. The leader of activism in the powerhouse of Nigeria’s economy was Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and co-founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), who led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of land and water by the multinational petroleum industry, namely the Royal Dutch Shell company.

During the peak of the protest movement, he was accused by the former military junta General Sani Abacha of the brutal murder of the Ogoni chiefs, who Saro-Wiwa accused of acquiescing to the government and Shell. Saro-Wiwa was hanged in 1995, despite international outcry.

Nonetheless, several notorious militant groups emerged from the Niger Delta. The most popular one is the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), an umbrella militant organization in the South-South geopolitical area in Nigeria. The militant organization is known for attacking oil pipelines, kidnapping workers of oil companies, oil theft (bunkering), and carrying out gruesome atrocities during the celebration of the 50-year anniversary of Nigeria’s independence at the nation’s capital, Abuja, where a bomb they planted exploded. The mastermind of the bombing, MEND leader Henry Okah, was given a life sentence in South Africa.

Fifteen Turkish sailors are being welcomed by their families and relatives upon their arrival at early Sunday following their abduction by pirates by pirates off the coast of Nigeria, at the Istanbul Airport in Istanbul, Turkey on February 14, 2021. Photo by İslam Yakut. Anadolu Agency.

In 2009, amnesty was offered to the group by the late Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in return for laying down their arms, a monthly stipend, educational support, receiving vocational training, and a promise to share a significant percentage of the oil revenue with the Niger Delta government.

The promise aimed at building infrastructure such as primary health-care centers and schools. After Yar’Adua’s death, offering amnesty to former militants was stopped by corrupted government officials.

Internal conflicts and border disputes triggered piracy in the Gulf of Guinea as well. In the Gulf of Guinea, for example, politically motivated piracy aligned with the Niger Delta militants and the Southern Cameroon separatists envisions the new nation of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. If this happens, the enclave will become a safe haven for pirates.

Recently, the Turkish cargo ship M/V Mozart sailing from Lagos to Cape Town, 100 nautical miles from the Gulf of Guinea, and northwest of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, was attacked, 19 of its members were kidnapped, and one was killed. On February 12, 15 Turkish seamen who had been kidnapped by the pirates were freed.

This is the second time Turkish nationals are abducted in Nigeria. According to the International Maritime Bureau, there are also piracy acts that go unreported. In the last decades, Somali pirates threatened one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, namely the Gulf of Aden. Now, piracy has moved to the Gulf of Guinea.

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Read: A Palestinian Memory: Israel’s Offensive on Gaza 12 Years Later

Securing the Gulf of Guinea is beyond the capacity of any current regional government. A number of existing subcontinent organizations share an interest in maritime security, but they don’t do enough to combat it. Such organizations include the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), and the Gulf of Guinea Commission (GGC).

Since not many efforts are made by member states of these organizations to combat piracy and maintain maritime security, the Gulf of Guinea has no significant contribution to curtailing maritime piracy. Various regional cooperation agreements such as the African Union’s Lome Charter and Yaoundé Code of Conduct have been adopted to combat piracy in the region.

Read: Search of Turkish Ship on the High Seas Was Illegal

The launch of a multinational coalition that will provide international intervention to support the affected nations and ships is necessary to tackle the constant piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. The intervention must include providing naval fleets, security forces, patrol ships, and antipiracy units to safeguard the region.

The African Union and the UN Security Council should pass an urgent resolution and adopt a practical mechanism against pirates and maritime robbery in the Gulf of Guinea. From this time onward, vessels and ships must have their own protection onboard including trained and armed forces in case of emergency and in order to protect the lives of their crews.

VIDEO: Turkey coordinates with embassies to free crew members kidnapped off Nigeria

The post The Gulf of Guinea: A New Strain of Piracy appeared first on Politics Today.

ICC Probe in Palestine Brings Some Hope to the Palestinians at Last

Politics Today — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 06:53:52 +0000

On February 5, the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced their decision that the court holds jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Palestine. While the court did not elaborate on what steps would follow, it is expected that international criminal investigations will be commenced, and that, potentially, Israelis (and Palestinians) guilty of crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court will be indicted and, hopefully, put on trial.

Understandably, there has been great excitement for this decision amongst human rights advocates and proponents of Palestinian rights, especially because it comes after a long period of foot-dragging on the part of the ICC. People have been disappointed before – the ICC Prosecutor repeatedly refused to investigate the Freedom Flotilla case, where Israeli commandos had forcibly stopped ships with humanitarian supplies headed for Gaza and killed ten persons in international waters.

Instead of examining the case in the context of the ongoing blockade of Gaza by Israel and the many violations inflicted upon the population of that territory, the prosecutor viewed the incident in isolation, and stated that the gravity of the violations did not reach the level required by the ICC Rome Statute.

In late 2019, on the basis of a protracted, nearly five-year-long preliminary investigation, the prosecutor stated she was “satisfied” that war crimes were being committed in Palestine. However, in recognition of the “unique and highly contested legal and factual issues” with regard to Palestine, she requested the court to ascertain whether the ICC did indeed have jurisdiction over Palestine – a move that, in the eyes of many, appeared as an attempt at passing the hot potato. Many feared another disappointment, and have been elated with the recent decision.

There is no question that the decision of the ICC is an extremely positive development. Israel and its allies in the United States and other Western countries go to great pains to present the situation in Palestine as a battle of democracy against “Islamofascist terror,” one that can only be solved by total annihilation of the enemy.

Conversely, many do-gooders in the West perceive Palestine merely as a humanitarian crisis that can be solved by development aid for poor Palestinians, or as one requiring “conflict resolution” interventions where Jews and Arabs hug each other in workshops, and all is well.

When it comes to the treatment of Palestinians, impunity permeates all levels of the Israeli political and military apparatus.

All of these narratives are, of course, false – Palestine is a human rights crisis, which is characterized by impunity for the violators of human rights. Resolution obviously requires a political solution, but eradicating impunity and punishing persons guilty of human rights violations and war crimes must be at the core. It is not only that lasting peace requires justice – justice is in and of itself a vital goal.

Impunity in Israel for human rights violations

When it comes to the treatment of Palestinians, impunity permeates all levels of the Israeli political and military apparatus. From the lowest-ranking soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) who shoots and kills Palestinians without justification, to the IDF general who orders the bombing of civilian homes, to the political leaders who incite genocide and instruct the building of Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land, the chances of being held to account have, up to this point, been practically zero.

The research of Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations highlights this Israeli contempt for Palestinian lives. Not one Israeli soldier has been, or will be, punished for human rights violations during Operation Defensive Edge, a major Israeli offensive on the helpless people of Gaza that resulted in more than 2,250 Palestinian deaths (65 percent of whom were noncombatants, according to the UN) and extensive documentation of widespread Israeli violations of the laws of war (a handful of IDF soldiers were punished for looting during the operation).

More recently, Israeli soldiers mowed down peaceful protesters at the Great March of Return near the border fence between Gaza and Israel, killing over 230 with live ammunition over a period of 86 weeks. Not a single soldier has been punished in any serious manner. In the West Bank, the Israeli NGO Yesh Din notes that 80 percent of Palestinian complaints against Israeli soldiers are dismissed without any investigation, and only 0.7 percent eventually lead to prosecution.

And, of course, political leaders openly brag about increasing colonial settlement in the West Bank, building Jewish-only cities on Palestinian land and fortifying the openly discriminatory legal system that protects colonial settlers at the expense of Palestinian rights. The incentives for Israelis to live in the colonies are extensive, and now approximately one in 10 Jewish Israelis live there.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad el-Maliki submits an official complaint against Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on 25 June 2015. Photo by Yasin Yağcı. Anadolu Agency.

A stark example of the situation is the case of Elor Azaria, an IDF soldier who was caught on video executing a wounded, defenseless Palestinian in the city of Hebron. Though international pressure forced the IDF to arrest and try him, thousands of Israelis demonstrated in his support, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and other ministers demanded leniency. He was eventually released after only nine months and became a hero in many quarters of Israeli society, appearing on television as a political consultant in recent elections.

Propaganda about the “only democracy in the Middle East” aside, it is clear that Israel will not hold violators to account. Therefore, it is vital that the ICC take the necessary action to punish offenders. Make no mistake: the Israeli military and political elite is aware of the great dangers international justice poses. Unsurprisingly, Israel is not state party to the ICC, nor is the United States, but 123 countries are. Should the ICC issue indictments, every one of those states would be under a legal obligation to arrest the suspect, making travel to those countries impossible.

Though not stated in so many words, the land that was occupied (and subjected to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) by Zionist forces in 1948 is recognized as the sovereign territory of Israel, and is therefore not part of the equation.

High-ranking IDF officers are already issued with a special emergency number, should they be arrested while traveling abroad, and there are special teams of lawyers ready to jump to their defence. That this is all being done proves that Israel sees the writing on the wall. Do not believe the bravado of Netanyahu and others: the prospect of being hauled to court in The Hague keeps them up at night.

The shortcomings of international efforts: the injustice of the “two-state solution”

The decision of the ICC is, therefore, an important, positive step towards addressing impunity in Palestine. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that it has a serious shortcoming, namely that it covers only the portion of Palestine occupied by Israel in 1967, i.e. Gaza and the West Bank (which includes East Jerusalem). The ICC states explicitly that its jurisdiction extends only to those territories, and that it is only able to adjudicate violations that took place there.

Though not stated in so many words, the land that was occupied (and subjected to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) by Zionist forces in 1948 is recognized as the sovereign territory of Israel, and is therefore not part of the equation. Even though Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (‘48 Palestinians’) live under a discriminatory regime with similar rights violations as Palestinians in the 1967 lands, and even though Palestinian refugees continue to suffer the violation of their internationally recognized right to return to their homes, those issues are not looked at as relevant.

Of course, as a legal matter, the ICC is correct: the state party to the ICC is the State of Palestine as recognized by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. Since that state is based on the Oslo framework, its territory can include only the land occupied by Israel in 1967 (a mere 22 percent of historic Palestine).

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