Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir cancelled plans to attend an economic conference in Uganda on July 26-28 after statements from Ugandan officials suggested that Bashir might be arrested if he stepped on Ugandan soil.
Bashir's attendance at the Smart Partnership Dialogue in Kampala would have presented the Ugandan government with a dilemma. The Ugandan government is obligated to arrest Bashir if he comes to Uganda, as per the arrest warrant issued last March by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Last July, however, Uganda voted with the African Union states to disregard the warrant.
The ICC has charged Bashir with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity (although as of this writing the warrant for his arrest doesn’t include any genocide charges). The warrant names Bashir as criminally responsible for intentionally directing attacks of murder, extermination, rape, torture, plunder and forced transfer of a significant portion of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, According to the charges, Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur on the basis of their ethnicity.
The UN says that the conflict in Darfur has displaced an estimated 2.7 million people and resulted in up to 300,000 deaths in the region. .Sudan's government disputes the figures, saying 10,000 people have been killed.
Uganda Responds to Pressure
According to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, nation states, and not the ICC itself are responsible for bringing those accused of war crimes, genocide and other charges to justice. Uganda is party to the Rome Statute.
On July 13, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told journalists in Kampala that Bashir "should know the obligation of Uganda is to arrest him. He should know that before he comes."
In answer to Ocampo's statement, Ugandan International Relations Ministry Okello Oryem affirmed his country's commitment to the Rome Statute and indicated that the Solicitor General's office had already received the arrest warrant for Bashir. "If and when Bashir arrives in Uganda, it is up to the Inspector General of Police to take action," Oryem said.
Khartoum responded angrily, demanding Oryem's dismissal. Although Sudanese official news report that Ugandan President Yoweri Musievini apologized to Bashir for Oryem's comments and provided written assurances that he will not be arrested in Uganda, there was also a veiled threat in the Ugandan president's statement about the incident. “When I want to fight you,” Musievini told reporters, “I insult you, I don’t invite you, I tell you beforehand. We don’t believe in surprise attacks.” The president added, “If there are any other issues, I will tell you ‘Please don’t come here because I cannot guarantee your safety’.”
Apparently Musievini's warning was heeded, and a Sudanese official attended the conference instead of Bashir.
Behind the ICC's Strategy
The Ugandan government's dilemma came against the backdrop of the earliest efforts of an international body to use legal means to combat war crimes and genocide. President Bashir is the first sitting head of government to be charged with war crimes. Initially, it was hoped that issuing a warrant for his arrest would in effect make him a prisoner of his own country, thus deterring other potential world leaders from committing the same crimes.
Back in July 2008, Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal and a former war crimes prosecutor told CBC News that eventually the Sudanese government might be convinced to deliver al-Bashir to the ICC — just as the Yugoslavian government handed over former president Slobodan Milosevic in 2001 in response to "sustained international pressure."
The Yugoslavian comparison has not held up so far. Although Bashir did cancel his plans to attend the July 2008 Smart Partnership Dialogue (while claiming that the cancellation was unrelated to the ICC charges) and backed out of attending South African President Jacob Zuma's inauguration in May 2009, since March of this year he has traveled abroad seven times, with no repercussions.
However, it is notable that Bashir has only traveled to countries which are not party to the Rome Statute, such as Eritrea, Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. The aborted trip to Uganda would have been the Sudanese president's first to a country that is obligated to comply with the ICC warrant.
The American Factor
The impact of Uganda's apparent decision to abide by the Rome Statute may be lessened if other nations do not follow suit. Not only African nations have sent mixed signals regarding implementation of the ICC ruling.
On July 9, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration set off on a trip that would include stops in Darfur and and Khartoum. “Right now President Al-Bashir is the president of the country and we have to work with him," Gration told Agence France Presse (AFP) in an interview from the Oslo. He added, however, that Bashir still must "do what’s right in terms of facing the International Criminal Court and those charges.”
Some in the American government view a visit to the accused leader of Sudan as incompatible with President Obama's election promises to fight human rights abuses in Africa. A statement from US House representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) claimed that Obama "spoke of ‘ratcheting up sanctions.’ Now, almost six months into the administration, the State Department is still conducting a much vaunted ‘comprehensive review’ of U.S.-Sudan policy. Nothing concrete has emerged. The little that has leaked out in press reports is disturbing.”
Wolf referred to high-level disagreement in the State Department over whether genocide has even been committed in Darfur. "Furthermore, they [U.S. State Department officials] are making overtures to Khartoum which are, at best, naïve," Wolf said.
Those overtures include the possible lifting of sanctions against Sudan and removing that country from the list of states that support terrorism. The US embassy in the Sudanese capital has already announced that it will issue visas for Sudanese nationals after more than ten years of not permitting them.
Building on Small Steps of Progress
The attempt to prevent genocide and war crimes via international legal pressure is a slow and often frustrating process. The ICC has little leverage with leaders who are lauded by a solid group of other states when they choose to dismiss the court's authority. While the use of arrest warrants is meant to virtually imprison the accused, how effective is this method on those like President Bashir who are backed by at least 50 countries in Africa and the Middle East? The only “prison” in which the Sudanese leader finds himself today is one that is expansive and powerful 'prison', where he can bask in the approval of other like-minded international figures. Only when war criminals at large are prevented from going to a destination that they actually want to visit are they somewhat incarcerated.
If Uganda's threat to arrest Bashir is a significant crack in the mostly smooth wall of unified African rejection of the ICC, it bodes well for future success in impacting – and perhaps deterring – perpetrators of war crimes and genocide. This is especially true if Western countries like the US carry through with their commitment to sanction human rights offenders.
On the other hand, Uganda may be a unique case, in that its government has its own reasons for bolstering the authority of the ICC. Uganda was the first country to refer a conflict to the ICC when it successfully obtained indictments for Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony and his top lieutenants. Having made use of those indictments to pressure LRA rebels to attend peace talks in 2008, Uganda can hardly dismiss the ICC's indictments of Bashir.
ICC prosecutors have not given up. In early July, they appealed the ICC tribunal's decision to exclude actual charges of genocide from Bashir's warrant. As the effort to bring the accused criminal to trial continues, hope remains that the gravity of his crimes will not be ignored by the family of nations.
Sources: Al Jazeera English, Al Arabiya, Reuters, Huffington Post, ArabNews.com, EarthTimes, Al Ahram Weekly, The Tripoli Post, France24, Sudan Tribune, CNS News, International News, Dayton Daily News, Zimbabwe Guardian
