A Trial for Crimes in Darfur

Check out this op-ed on Darfur by UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie in today's Washington Post. Our advocate Rick Neal recently met the actress while they were both traveling through Abeche, Chad.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) just announced the indictments of two Sudanese, a government official and a militia commander, for atrocities committed in Darfur.

In her op-ed, Angelina writes:

Accountability is a powerful force. It has the potential to change behavior -- to check aggression by those who are used to acting with impunity. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has said that genocide is not a crime of passion; it is a calculated offense. He's right. When crimes against humanity are punished consistently and severely, the killers' calculus will change.

RI supports the ICC's actions on Darfur as well. Our President Ken Bacon is quoted as saying:

Many attacks by government forces and government-backed militias have targeted innocent civilians, including acts of murder, torture and mass rape. We applaud the ICC for treating these crimes with the seriousness they deserve and urge the international community to support the court’s efforts in bringing justice to Darfur.

Wasn't that Angelina Jolie?

On Sunday, Rick Neal landed in Chad's capital N'Djamena (via Paris) to begin a month-long mission looking at internally displaced people (IDPs) in Chad and the Central African Republic. He sent the following in today:

"Sunday was Oscar Night in Los Angeles, but there in Paris Angelina Jolie was making her way to the flight to N'Djamena, surrounded by a coterie of Air France staff. I found myself with her again yesterday morning, on the small UN plane coming out to Abeche, the humanitarian outpost in eastern Chad. She flew on to Bahai in the northeast, to shed light on the situation of refugees coming from Darfur. For a few minutes, at least, Refugees International got to bask in the light of humanitarian celebrity.

"Then it was back to work - my first day in the field for a mission looking at the situation among refugees and IDPs in eastern Chad. From here, it is difficult to tell what is happening: a huge caseload of 230,000 refugees from Darfur, and now 100,000 IDPs, many displaced in the past few months. I was afraid that this was a continuing trend, but it seems that displacement, especially in the southeast, has tapered off since President Deby visited the area last November for 10 days of consultations with the local chiefs.

"I am on my way down there now. I have to cut this short to make sure I don't miss my flight to the airport. I hope I find that attacks against civilians have stopped and that the IDPs are getting the help they need."

ICC Releases Evidence on Darfur Crimes

Just wanted to follow up on Ken's post yesterday. We released an official statement in reaction to the evidence released by the Prosecutor for the Internatinal Criminal Court (ICC) today. As Ken says in the statment,

“The presentation of evidence by the ICC Prosecutor is a good first step in
bringing to justice the people responsible for heinous crimes against humanity
in Darfur. The evidence makes it clear that senior government officials are
responsible for the brutalities in Darfur and they must be held
accountable.”

The ICC's press release says:

"Today ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presents evidence showing that Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Minister of State for the Interior of the Government of the Sudan, and Ali Kushayb, a leader of the Militia/Janjaweed, jointly committed crimes against the civilian population in Darfur. Based on evidence collected during the last 20 months, the Prosecution has concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb, (also known as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman) bear criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. The evidence shows they acted together, and with others, with the common purpose of carrying out attacks against the civilian populations."

The full press release includes links to a .pdf of the summary of evidence provided by the Prosecutor and a fact sheet on the Prosecutor's investigation in Darfur.

You can also read the ICC Prosecutor's Press Briefing.

President's Corner: Can There be Justice and Peace in Darfur?

Why doesn't President Bush listen to his conscience? He has said that Sudan is committing genocide in Darfur, yet has taken no military or effective diplomatic action to stop it.

Events this week will highlight the timidity of the U.S. response to genocide. The Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court plans to reveal evidence he has assembled during a two year investigation of brutalities by Sudanese forces, government-backed militias and rebel groups. The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, probably won't charge anybody with genocide -- at least now -- but the charges will be serious. Last week his office said that "Moreno-Ocampo will submit evidence in connection with named individuals of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur."

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council late last year that he may bring several waves of charges, meaning that the evidence he sends to the ICC judges could be just the first round. Under the ICC's rules the judges will review the evidence and decide whether to issue arrest warrants and then issue formal charges.

The Darfur docket is the young ICC's highest profile case. It raises three important questions. First, what will be the Sudanese response to public evidence of heinous crimes that is likely to name high government officials, as well as rebel leaders? Second, will the announcement of the evidence further complicate a stumbling effort to negotiate an end to the Darfur conflict, or can there be justice and peace in Darfur at the same time? Third, if high-level government officials are indeed named, will there be further government efforts to harass and clamp down on the most visible representatives of western nations in Sudan -- the humanitarian agencies and their staff?

Exactly two years ago I was in Sudan when the government was working hard to discourage the UN Security Council from launching an ICC investigation of its actions in Darfur. A UN panel had just issued a lengthy report that found 51 government, militia and rebel officials guilty of war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, and crimes against humanity for such crimes as murder, rape and attacks against innocent civilians. The list, which eventually was turned over to the ICC, has never been made public. After the UN Commission of Inquiry report came out, Sudanese officials warned that any effort to prosecute government officials for war crimes would create an "explosion" of hostility to UN and humanitarian workers in Sudan, leading to attacks and abductions that would make Darfur look like Iraq. If the presentation of the ICC case provokes such a response, the UN and the U.S. will be put on the spot: Will they respond to these attacks in a way that punishes the Khartoum government or will they merely issue toothless statements of condemnation?

The second question -- can there be justice and peace at the same time -- is hotly debated by human rights advocates, diplomats and humanitarian workers. U.S. diplomats in Khartoum argue that the ICC proceedings at least will complicate and at most will block ongoing efforts to negotiate an end to the Darfur conflict, which has displaced 2.5 million people and led to an estimated 400,000 deaths in four years. The fears are understandable, but peace talks are going nowhere now, so it will be hard to measure whether the ICC's presentation of evidence has any further impact. Not surprisingly, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council last year that he believes the presentation of charges actually will improve the chances of reaching a peace agreement.

In fact, the ICC's action isn't likely to shed much light on whether justice can come before peace. But it will highlight once again the brutality of all sides in the Darfur conflict and how ineffective the U.S. response has been, despite President Bush's charges of genocide.

What it means to be Stateless

Last Thursday Congress held a special briefing on stateless children, organized in part by our Senior Advocate for Statelessness Initiatives Maureen. The briefing brought together various testimonies highlighting the plight of the stateless, meaning persons who have no legal proof of citizenship and with no country that will grant them this right.

Without any documentation of citizenship, stateless people are often prevented from working, owning land, going to school, voting, and even getting married. With the estimated number of stateless people in the world exceeding 11 million, and forty percent of all births going unregistered each year, stateless children are a particularly vulnerable group.

Maureen and RI are at the forefront of the work on this important issue, particularly with our 2005 report on stateless people entitled Lives on Hold: The Human Cost of Statelessness.

This past fall, Maureen conducted two humanitarian missions that focused on statelessness. The first mission to West Africa, with RI consultant Dawn found that stateless issues are at the root of the ongoing conflict in Cote d'Ivoire. You can read the personal story of a stateless woman in western Cote d'Ivoire by clicking here. And in Senegal, RI found that stateless Mauritanians are in need of protection and assistance to return home voluntarily.

The second mission looked at stateless Haitians. Maureen and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) representative Bernadette found that there are up to one million people of Haitian origin living undocumented in the Dominican Republic. Of these, the group of most concern is the large number of children of Dominican-Haitian descent who are denied the right to citizenship by the government of the Dominican Republic and are not issued identity documents like a birth certificate. This creates a hindrance for these children as they get older and try to register for school.

The problem of statelessness is not going away anytime soon, and it continues to be closely linked with displacement and insecurity around the world. As a result, countries like the US will have to become more involved in assisting stateless persons and in pressuring other governments to stop neglecting these vulnerable populations.

(For more information on RI and statelessness you can read this previous blog entry by our president Ken Bacon).

Beauty and Horror (Colombia)

Sean filed his last post from Colombia today before he and Andrea return to the U.S.:

"So we did our last field trip yesterday - a three hour drive out of Pasto to
the town of Samaniego. The road was a crazy trip through winding roads up
and down the Andes. Going up and down thousands of feet at a time on potholed
roads makes for challenging driving.

Thankfully, the scenery made up for it - these are some of the most beautiful
mountains I have ever seen. The mountains touch the clouds, and on a day
with blue skies like yesterday, it really did feel like being on the ceiling of
the world. The mountains are an emerald green patchwork of small farms,
and it's amazing to see the valleys plunge thousands of feet below you to rise
again into the next mountain. Just as beautiful was the fact that
everything seemed to be in bloom - the mountains were studded everwhere with
huge trees blooming with yellow flowers. It looked like specks of gold
dotting the hillsides everwhere. And there were flowers of every color
along the road with butterflies and birds all around. When we would
descend a mountain, you'd find rushing streams that were lush with tropical
plants, really making it feel like a hidden paradise.

As I said, the scenery made up for the nausea-inducing drive!

What really is sad about all of this is that we got to the town of Samaniego
and you could cut the tension with a knife. There are two rebel groups on
one side of the town, two paramilitary groups on the other side of town, and
army forces in the town. The frontlines of fighting were only two hours
away, and they were counting the number of murders in town (8 over the weekend)
and land mine victims (one person every two days) with great trepidation that it
would get worse. There was a general resignation that war was about to
overrun their region.

We went to meet a community of displaced people who had arrived there on
Thursday of last week, but we were told that they had returned to their homes on
Monday. The horror of all this is that they were told to leave their town
by armed actors, so they did. Then they were told that they could
return. What they weren't told is that their town has been converted into a
battlefield, and that their farms have been littered with landmines. This
makes it impossible for them to work, or to even leave their homes once they get
there. As a result, these populations become trapped, and even more
vulnerable than before. It was the general consensus that things would
only get worse in the upcoming months."

I promise we'll keep you posted on Sean and Andrea's efforts to help this community and the other displaced people in Colombia.

Quiet as a Mouse in Colombia

More from Sean in Colombia. (Read all of Sean's Colombia posts here.) He filed this post yesterday. He and Andrea are heading home in a few days after their 3-week mission.

We arrived here in Pasto on Thursday afternoon - it's a small town high in the Andes mountains, (about 8,500 feet high) right near the border with Equador. The temperature change from Quibdo is immediately noticable. We went from 110 degrees and humid with little air conditioning to 50 degrees with no heating! Needless to say, my heat-loving body has cought a bit of a cold in its attempt to readjust to the weather.

It's not just the weather that's different here - pretty much everything is as different as night and day. Quibdo is mainly Afro-Colombian and Pasto is mainly indigenous. Quibdo was full of music in the streets all day long, while Pasto is quiet as a mouse.

Still, despite the differences many of the same problems that we've seen elsewhere repeat themselves here. Lack of adequate government attention to the displaced, lack of registration and recognition of displaced people, difficult living conditions, lack of work. What has been very noticable here is that we are talking to communities who have come here very recently - three or four months ago.

And the violence people are fleeing sounds horrible. We met one group of 9 children whose mother had been killed by paramilitaries in September. When we asked about their father, the response was that he wasn't targeted, he was just killed by war violence three years earlier. With no one to rely on, the children picked up and moved to Pasto. The two oldest sisters, 19 and 17, are providing for the rest of the kids - the youngest is 2. And to top it off the government says they don't qualify for an extension of emergency assistance - their situation doesn't merit it. Ridiculous!

The violence is also very palpable here in the sense that Colombia is probably the only place where I have done human rights abuse documentation where the victims don't want to talk about what happened to them. They are most focused on their needs right now. But when you ask why someone left, their answer is almost always ¨because of the violence¨ with no further explanation. This indicates to me that they are still living through the trauma, and don't necessarily feel like it is in the past. It's a hard reality to recognize, and adds a new layer of complexity to how I'm seeing my work.

Tomorrow is our last day in Pasto before heading to Bogota for the last three days of our trip. Should be an interesting last day though - we're joining the UN on a trip to a nearby village where 14 families just fled last week. So we'll get a sense of what's really going on on the ground. Then it's off to the relative comforts of a big city, and I'm especially looking forward to the food. Though I put myself up there with the biggest of meat eaters, I've had nothing but steak and grilled chicken to eat for the past three weeks. I'm going to hunker down in Bogota with a nice salad and maybe some pasta or Thai food - I can't wait!

A College Student's Take on Darfur

Today's post was written by our Communications intern Seth:

Darfur is by now the most publicized genocide and humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. While many Americans may not know the extent of the abuse, it is common knowledge that Arab militias affiliated with the Sudanese government are responsible for raping and murdering thousands of innocent villagers.

So far this conflict has displaced 2.2 million people from their homes and led to more than 400,000 deaths. Thousands have been raped. These numbers are increasing every day, despite Khartoum’s hypothetical acceptance of a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force. Since 2004 Refugees International has conducted nine missions to Sudan and Chad and continues to actively advocate for the victims of this deepening humanitarian crisis.

As an intern for Refugees International and a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I can testify to the fact that a surprising number of average college students are well-informed about the genocide and that many care deeply about this issue. In fact, one of the largest and most active student groups at UNC is S.U.D.A.N., Students United for Darfur Action Now, an organization dedicated to increasing awareness and raising money for Darfur. Similar groups exist and are active on college campuses all across the country.

But if this is the case, why has nothing substantive been done to stop the human rights abuses? Dedicated and selfless activism at the grass-roots level has helped raise considerable awareness and financial support for this issue. Personally, I find it very heartening that so many ordinary Americans are becoming interested and getting involved.

Unfortunately, significant policy changes must also occur at the national and particularly the international level before the genocide can be stopped and the displaced can finally return home. But thankfully, the dedicated and hard-working advocates here at Refugees International are doing everything they can to ensure that these changes are made sooner rather than later.

Wishing for Rain

Here is another update from Sean in the field (You can read his previous post by clicking here). He and Andrea have spent the past few days in Quibdo, in the Choco District of western Colombia, visiting with displaced communities in the surrounding area.

I'm in the rainiest part of the world right now - Choco, Colombia gets over 35 feet of rain a year. Except for now - it hasn't rained here in 15 days. They don't have a public water system since everyone collects rain water and uses that. But since it hasn't rained, there's no water. Our hotel just ran out today and is trying to get some more so that we can bathe. Otherwise, the next four days here are going to be hot, sticky, and dusty - not something I'm looking forward to.

The displaced people we're working with have it much worse. They've resorted to going to the local river to collect water for their basic needs, and you can see people bathing and doing laundry in the rivers. To say the least, these rivers are not clean in the urban area - I wonder if things are getting cleaner or dirtier by using the rivers, but I realize people have no choice.

Work is going well, but our findings are also very depressing. It’s the same problems we’ve already seen in Colombia, with the authorities taking funding meant for the displaced and "disappearing" it. The displaced are being charged for services that are supposed to be free, and it seems like no matter who they go to with the local authorities, no one can help them. There are some very interesting NGOs here that represent the local displaced communities, and they can't get anyone (domestic or international) to fund them to do basic service provision projects.

We've spent the day today talking to indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups about their efforts to help their people despite the lack of support. It's incredibly inspiring to see what they're doing, but also depressing to think that they could be doing more if resources actually got to them. In the case of the indigenous organization, they just finished building a center for their people to convalesce in when they're ill - it's a beautiful place. But though they got some support from the Basque and Austrian governments, they have no funding to keep a nurse there or to bring a doctor in to care for the people who are there. One of the Afro-Colombian groups got a small bit of money to buy a computer and a printer, but they can't afford toner for the printer. Needless to say, we'll be drawing attention to this as best we can.

President’s Corner: Iraqi Refugees Represent a “Humanitarian Catastrophe.”

I just returned from Cairo, where there is increasing concern about the growing number of Iraqi refugees. According to the Egyptian press there are as many as 150,000 Iraqi refugees in Cairo, double the number just five months ago. The growing population of Iraqis in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East highlights the need for the U.S. to begin working to craft regional solutions to the problems it has created in Iraq.

Last week the vice president of Syria said: “The invasion of Iraq has led to an outpouring of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in Syria and neighboring countries,” adding that the influx has “imposed heavy economic, social and security burdens.” He called the situation a “humanitarian catastrophe” created by the U.S. Syria has been gradually tightening restrictions on Iraqi refugees, making it more difficult for them to stay in the country.

Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, visited Syria and Jordan last week. Together these two countries host most of the estimated two million refugees from Iraq. In an effort to escape sectarian violence, Iraqis are leaving their country at the rate of 100,000 a month, making Iraqis the world’s fastest growing refugee population today.

Guterres praised Syria and Jordan for absorbing as many as 1.5 million Iraqis. “The pressure over society, over resources and infrastructure, over social systems and education, is enormous,” the High Commissioner said. “The sacrifices made by these countries are remarkable and the international community needs to assume full responsibility for supporting them.”

Egypt, which places a heavy premium on security, worries that instability will come with the refugees. As the fighting between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims worsens in Iraq, Egyptians fear that refugees will bring sectarian violence to Egypt, a predominantly Sunni country. So far this hasn’t happened; Iraqi refugees want to leave violence behind, not bring it with them. However, late last year Iraqis protested against Egyptian restrictions on them, including rules designed to keep Iraqi children out of school.

Throughout the Middle East people wonder why the U.S. isn’t doing more to ease the growing burdens of the rising refugee population. The Bush administration, of course, is trying--so far without success--to end the violence in Iraq. But it has done little more than fret about the growing refugee crisis so far.

At a time when the U.S. is spending $8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, it hasn’t been able to come up with money to help UNHCR expand its operations for displaced Iraqis. The UN refugee agency is seeking $60 million for displaced Iraqis this year. It needs the money as soon as possible to ramp up its operations. The U.S. reliably provides 25% of UNHCR’s budget, but domestic budget wrangling have prevented Washington from making its contribution for Iraqi refugees yet.

Aside from supporting the UNHCR, the U.S. needs to consider bilateral aid to countries hosting large numbers of Iraqis. Last week the U.S. announced that it was authorizing its ambassador to Syria to begin discussing the refugee issue with the government in Damascus. Both Syria and Jordan need help in bearing the burden of Iraqi refugees.

Finally, the U.S. needs to move aggressively to help protect the most vulnerable refugees, particularly those Iraqis whose lives are in danger because they have supported the U.S. Translators and others who have worked with U.S. forces are seen as collaborators and unable to remain in Iraq, yet Washington has no comprehensive program for protecting Iraqis who have put their lives in danger to support the U.S.

Right now the State Department has plans to resettle up to 7,000 Iraqis in the U.S. this year. This would be a huge increase over the 202 officially resettled last year, but it may not be enough, given the surging number of people leaving Iraq. Sen. Edward Kennedy and others are urging the administration to address the Iraqi refugee problem more effectively.

The U.S. may not know how to stop the violence in Iraq, but it does know how to protect refugees. We have to start now.

Displaced but Surviving in Colombia

Additional details from Sean on the Colombian communities he discussed in yesterday's post:

We had a long 3 hour drive from Sincelejo to the tiny community of Tierra Alta, a place that has been ravaged by war. We visited three communities of displaced people, and it was striking to see just how much luck plays into people's survival.

The first community we visited had received no government support – they were squatting on land and had to construct their homes themselves. Most were made of scavenged wood, plastic tarp, and any other materials that could be used to provide shelter. They had a little land to grow food, but they were right next to a river that floods three or four times a year and destroys all their crops. They had no sanitation, and pretty much no anything – they had been living like this for four years. Despite their very hard circumstances, they were joking with us and we had a good conversation...

The next two communities were just as interesting. One had received international support, and were able to build a school and a church, and had gotten some government support in housing. Despite this, they were mainly farmers who had no access to land to farm, and almost no one had received any job training to allow them to do anything but farm. But they were well organized and were trying to push hard for change.

The third community was similarly organized, although they had received some support for a model housing project, so they also had some tolerable living conditions. The problem here was that the government promised them water and it hadn't come for three years. Despite this, the government claims they have photos and video of the water project being completed in the community – we didn't see a drop of piping or water anywhere.

...Yesterday, we had meetings with a series of government officials – interesting to hear them say they were taking care of things that we had seen with our own eyes as being non-existent.

Next we're hopping onto a plane and heading to Quibdo for a week. The province gets more rain than almost anywhere else in the world – about 35 feet per year – and it's supposed to be hot as hell. But this is where I might get to take a canoe up to the indigenous village, so I'm excited for what the next few days hold!

RI Advocates on Mission in Colombia

Advocates Sean and Andrea are now on mission in Colombia, where three million people have been displaced from their homes. The focus of this mission is to assess the current situation for internally displaced people (IDPs) prior to the March visit of UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres.

RI last traveled to Colombia in June 2006, where we found hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in deplorable conditions in urban areas. In addition, the Colombian government was not adequately protecting displaced people or meeting their humanitarian needs, such as food, water, shelter or health care. Sean and Andrea are following up on this previous work in order to offer recommendations to the UN Refugee Agency and other policy makers as they discuss Colombia's policies towards displaced people.

Andrea and Sean have spent the past few days traveling in the north to meet with displaced communities. Here is a personal account from Sean in the field:

We left Cartagena for the inland city of Sinselejo early Sunday morning and made a stop in San Onofre along the way, where we were able to meet a few displaced families who have received absolutely no government assistance in four years. To top it off, they had to invade land to have somewhere to live, and after a year of fighting with the land owner (who finally sold the land to the city), they had to scrounge around to find materials to build their own houses. As a result, they were living in desperate conditions – one meal a day if they were lucky, houses that barn animals would complain about, health care services that thought the little red pill (Advil) was the solution to all ills, and few hopes for the future.

The worst part is that most of these people have left lives of farming for safety in the cities – as a result, they have no training to do any kind of urban work. They’re desperate to get a little piece of land to farm so they can support their families, and few hopes of doing so. And to make it worse, they’re usually on the outer edges of cities where they are surrounded by unused farmlands or grazing fields that land owners refuse to sell – so they can see their salvation, but know they’ll be shot if they try to reach it.

Unfortunately, we saw the same problem play out in Sinselejo and in the displaced communities of Tierra Alta – with the complication that these communities have often been robbed of government services – we heard one story of a woman who was promised a house by the government, and when she went to claim it, she was told that she was already living in it and that they had her signature from four different house visits – she has never seen the house. Another series of communities were told that the government had video footage of a new water system in their towns as proof that they were completed – we saw no water anywhere, and villages full of frustrated people as a result. The stories go on and on and on, and it makes you wonder how to move forward with a situation like this – when resources are stolen at every turn so that there are none left by the time they are supposed to reach the beneficiaries.

Despite this, we’re working hard on a few solid ideas for how to get some progress. I’ll fill you in on them when they are more concrete.

As for the rest of the trip so far, the cities of the past few days have been really interesting. We’re in cattle country, and I’ve had some of the best beef I’ve eaten in a long time. The restaurants are full of dozens of fruits – many that I know and many that I don’t – so we’re having fun drinking different things. Though I’m still a fan of my guanabana, I do like ordering lolo juice just so I can say the silly name.

Khmer Rouge War Crimes Trial Still in Doubt

RI Consultant Eugene Carlson has sent more from Phnom Penh. (You can also read his earlier postcard from Cambodia.)

Are the aging leaders of Cambodia’s bloodthirsty Khmer Rouge heading to trial at last?

Nearly 30 years after their defeat, will a United Nations-sponsored war crimes tribunal finally convene to judge the perpetrators of “Year Zero” -- the uniquely barbaric revolution that tortured and murdered up to one quarter of Cambodia’s population in the 1970s and kindled one of the greatest refugee flows of modern times?

Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Odds of the trial getting underway, always part of the conversational undercurrent in Phnom Penh, ramped up in recent days, due in part to an unusual gathering of government officials, diplomats, academics and minor Khmer Rouge figures.

Organized by AdHoc, a local non-governmental organization, and billed as an attempt at reconciliation, the idea was to record a wide range of views on Cambodia’s holocaust and then to broadcast the proceedings in districts, town and villages throughout the country.

If the U.N. tribunal fails to gel, the thinking goes, perhaps the recorded testimony will help a questioning Cambodian population come to terms, at least partially, with their national trauma.

At the two-day conference, scholars debated the fine point of whether four years of mass murder by the Khmer Rouge met the definition of “genocide” or was merely morally appalling behavior of an extreme nature.

A particularly poignant witness was Nhem En, chief photographer at the notorious Toul Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh. His simple black and white portraits of men and women, boys and girls, destined for execution, have achieved iconic status as documents of Khmer Rouge horror. Nhem En apologized for the role he played.

“I hope these photographs will always unsettle us and make us uncomfortable,” said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli. “Each of these pictures is worth a thousand tears.”

Meanwhile, behind-the-scenes trial organizing staggers on. It’s officially called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Years of work by an international team of lawyers, jurists and human rights activists has pushed the trial somewhat closer to take off.

There’s a new courthouse. A panel of 30 judges and prosecutors from 11 countries, including Cambodia, has been named. Prosecutors say they’re ready to hand down indictments. Posters illustrating an anonymous Khmer Rouge leader testifying to the court have been sent around the country. Bumper stickers are on the way.

International donors have contributed the bulk of a three-year, $56 million budget. Microsoft announced two weeks ago that it was contributing $100,000, no strings attached.

Yet major, perhaps insurmountable, hurdles remain. They flow largely from the U.N’s controversial decision – required to win Cambodia’s cooperation -- to yield a significant amount of discretion to Cambodian law and its judiciary. The result is that Cambodia owns five of the seats on the nine-member judges’ panel and a number of politically-connected lawyers are installed in top ECCC posts.

And here’s where the process has gone aground. It’s no secret that the local bar and judiciary take signals from the government.

Close observers of Cambodian politics say Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former mid-level Khmer Rouge combatant and an acknowledged superb political tactician in his current role, is worried that he and other high officials in Cambodia’s ruling party may be tarred by trial testimony.

(Trial rules do, however, limit prosecution to “senior leaders” of the Khmer Rouge, which eliminates Hun Sen from the start. He’s also on record as supporting the tribunal.)

Behind the scenes, however, the ECCC’s Cambodians have argued incessantly over minutiae as well as important trial rules that include such international standards as proper rules of evidence and a credible defense for the accused, all in a public forum.

The delays have been so maddening that one or more of the non-Cambodian judges are thought to be weighing the option of resigning.

Ultimately, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon could withdraw United Nations sponsorship, a move that would likely reduce Cambodia’s standing in the international legal community to a façade.

There’s also speculation that China, an historic ally of Cambodia and a supporter of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, would like the trial to quietly go away.

Beyond seeking justice for Khmer Rouge victims, many believe the future of other trials for crimes against humanity is at stake. They ask: How can an international judicial process that prosecuted mass murderers in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, East Timor and the former Yugoslavia, be manipulated to ignore the bloody record of the Khmer Rouge?

The logrolling is driving trial supporters crazy. One insider who’s worked at the top level of tribunal planning for several years, shrugs his shoulders, saying he has absolutely no idea whether or not the trial will take place.

Perhaps the leading indicator of doubt over an imminent start to the trial is the nonchalance shown by the expected dozen or so defendants. Only one has been detained.

Such leading lights of the Khmer Rouge as Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea, now elderly men, live openly and are occasionally quoted in the press.

Torture and killing? They say they had no idea. Must have been someone else.

Iraq Refugees Facing Fewer Options

Refugees International Advocate Kristele Younes just returned from Geneva today, where she had spent the last week talking to various UN agencies about the two million Iraqi refugees currently trying to survive outside of their country. Her report was troubling. Jordan and Syria are making it increasingly difficult for Iraqis to enter their countries. Jordan has already shut its border to young men, forcing families to separate. Now, it looks like Syria is no longer issuing 3-month visas to Iraqis and is only allowing Iraqis to enter for a mere two weeks. As Ken Bacon noted in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing a few months ago, "The worst outcome would be to see Syria and Jordan close their borders to Iraqis, removing a safety valve that is saving lives. One Iraqi told us, ‘Iraqis who are unable to flee the country are now in a queue, waiting their turn to die.’ ”

Yesterday's Washington Post described in vivid terms what it is like to live as an Iraqi refugee in Jordan. The article described the horror in Iraq from which people have been forced to flee and the severe conditions that they currently face outside of their homeland.

"Inside his cold, crumbling apartment, Saad Ali teeters on the fringes of
life. Once a popular singer in his native Baghdad, he is now unemployed. To pay
his $45 monthly rent, he borrows from friends. To bathe, he boils water on a
tiny heater. He sleeps on a frayed mattress, under a tattered blanket.

Outside, Ali, 35, avoids police officers and disguises his Arabic with a Jordanian dialect. He returns home before 10 p.m. to stay clear of government checkpoints. Like hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees here, he fears being deported. Six months ago, near his home in Baghdad, two men threatened to kill him. Singing romantic songs, they said, was un-Islamic."

Kristele and Sean heard similar stories when they were in Amman and Damascus and witnessed these conditions for themselves. One of the Iraqi refugees they met is pictured here sitting on her own tattered mat in a barren room with few possessions.

In Geneva last week, Kristele listened to the UN Country Team describe the deteriorating humanitarian conditions that Iraqi refugees are facing. Refugees International continues to call on the U.S. and other countries to provide increased funding for food, housing, health care, and education for Iraqi refugees and for all UN agencies to take concrete action to provide assistance for these people.

UN Secretary-General takes on Congo, Darfur

A family in the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Photo Credit: John Baynard)

As his first major trip as UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon traveled to four countries in East Africa this week, just one month after taking office. Refugees International paid close attention to this trip and sent a letter urging Mr. Ban to ensure that the UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo protects civilians from attacks and consolidates the peace that is slowly enveloping this country. As The Economist noted when it highlighted the Secretary-General’s trip to the country, “Mr. Ban is now hoping that he can help Congo move towards stability and away from chaos. There is reason for hope.”

Indeed, Refugees International Advocate Rick Neal, has been trying to get the message out that while the situation in the Congo remains fragile, displaced people are returning home, civilians are under less threat of attack, and more people in need are receiving help. His report, Seizing This Moment of Hope argues that more needs to be done to stabilize the country and build upon these successes. For example, as we noted in our letter to Mr. Ban, the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC must do more to stop attacks against civilians and Rwanda and Uganda must be urged to enforce the United Nations arms embargo and take all necessary action to choke off support for armed groups in the DRC.

We were also pleased to see Mr. Ban make Darfur a top priority. In his speech to the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, he said,

“Since taking office as Secretary-General, I have made Darfur my top priority. I will continue to do so regardless of the challenges ahead, and I am looking forward to productive discussions with many of you during this Summit. The partnership between the AU and the UN is of central importance to how we fare on this, the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Together, we must work to end the violence and scorched-earth policies adopted by various parties, including militias, as well as the bombings which are still a terrifying feature of life in Darfur.
We must address the regional dimensions of the crisis. Lifesaving humanitarian work must be allowed to resume, and civil society in Darfur must have a voice in the peace process. And we must persuade non-signatories to join, while building consensus for the urgent deployment of a UN-AU force on the ground. I sincerely hope we can reach agreement on this vital issue during our discussions in the margins of this Summit.”

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir continues to block deployment of UN peacekeepers that could help stabilize the country and protect civilians from violence, and did not change his stance after meeting with the Secretary-General at the African Union summit. As Darfur continues to deteriorate, Mr. Ban has a tough road ahead.