Friday, October 29, 2010

IntLawGrrls

IntLawGrrls

Questioning hierarchies of harm

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 03:16 AM PDT

Many IntLawGrrls have gathered this morning to honor Judge Patricia Wald at our roundtable on "Women and International Criminal Law." I'll be participating in the first panel, entitled The Limits of International Criminal Law, and look forward to receiving comments on my paper, "Questioning Hierarchies of Harm: Women, Forced Migration, and International Criminal Law." Here's a preview of some of the ideas therein:
From the Akayesu case to the Revolutionary United Front decision, international criminal law has made great strides in addressing harm perpetrated against women in wartime. Though these doctrinal developments are laudable, the gendered structure of international criminal law diverts attention away from other significant harms that women endure as a result of armed conflict. In particular, international criminal law's hierarchy of harm is deeply problematic. This hierarchy elevates crimes committed as part of a plan or pattern across political groups – for example, by members of one group against members of a second group on the other side of a political conflict, whether during war or otherwise – over equally serious forms of harm perpetrated randomly, often within political groups – for example, by men against women on the same side of a conflict. This approach is problematic because female forced migrants suffer serious harms that do not fall clearly within the framework of international criminal law. These harms include rape, sexual assault, and other forms of physical violence that are not part of a master criminal plan but are rather private and opportunistic harms enabled by situations of displacement.
Refugees and internally displaced women suffer extensive violence at the hands of husbands, boyfriends, family members, neighbors, aid workers, peacekeepers, and strangers, none of whom is acting at the behest of a state or militia or fulfilling an organizational master plan. Is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court applicable to these crimes? While the language of the statute does not provide an obvious basis for prosecuting opportunistic crimes against female forced migrants, international refugee law offers a potential avenue for interpreting international criminal law to cover such crimes. Even so, the fit is imperfect – perhaps unsurprisingly given that the law was created to address very different crimes. Beyond the limitations of international criminal law, a vacuum of accountability exists on several levels in situations of forced displacement. Female forced migrants cannot rely on their own governments, their host governments, and often even international humanitarian organizations to protect them against opportunistic violence.
Should international criminal law step into the void? One might argue that the purpose of international criminal law is to provide accountability for conflict-related harms that would not otherwise be addressed. From that perspective, redress for the myriad forms of violence suffered by female forced migrants – harms that usually fall outside of any legal accountability mechanisms – seems an important component of that goal. Similarly, if the central aim of international criminal law is to account for crimes of such severity that they can be considered to be harms against all humankind, violence against women in situations of displacement is so prevalent and destructive that its prosecution should be viewed as a significant component of this goal. Such a step would require quite serious reconstruction of international criminal law, namely expansion of its scope and restructuring of its focus.
It may be that a structure designed specifically to prevent and account for opportunistic violence against female forced migrants would be better equipped to perform that task. Criminal accountability might be better performed in national legal systems or informal justice systems created within camp environments. There are also solutions other than criminal accountability, such as human rights law, that might be more appropriate in addressing such harms. In the meantime, until a solution is found that places these "private" crimes on equal footing with "public" attacks currently prohibited by international criminal law, the serious and frequent harms suffered by forcibly displaced women will continue to be overlooked, relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of harms.

Go On! U.S. refugee law

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 02:00 AM PDT

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

The 30th Anniversary of the Refugee Act is the topic of a symposium to be held 10:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m. on November 12, 2010, by the Center for Immigrants' Rights at the Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University, University Park. (hat tip ImmigrationProf Blog)
Moderating the program will be Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia (below right), Clinical Professor and Center Director. Speakers who will consider the United States' Refugee Act of 1980 in contemporary context include:
► Elizabeth Dallam, Senior Protection Officer at the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
► Regina Germain, Adjunct Professor at Sturm College of Law, University of Denver, and author of The Asylum Primer (6th ed., 2010)
► Tara Magner, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and Senior Counsel to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senator Patrick Leahy
► Jeanne Smoot, Public Policy Director, Tahirih Justice Center, Washington, D.C.
► Anne Sovcik, Advocacy Counsel for Human Rights First's Refugee Protection Program and Chair of the Asylum Working Group
Program here; other details and registration available here.

On October 29

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 12:44 AM PDT

On this day in ...
... 1940 (70 years ago today), even though it had not joined the conflict then raging in Europe, the United States began conscripting men into the armed forces via a lottery. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson chose the numbers, as illustrated in this cartoon, part of a super timeline of U.S. activities in this World War II year before the Pearl Harbor attack. Quoting church leaders who supported the move, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech defending the 1st-ever peacetime draft.


(Prior October 29 posts are here, here, and here.)
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