29 April 2012

This week had none of the high profile developments of last week, but that by no means that nothing happened at the UN. In addition to a number of interesting Security Council meetings, there were two major judicial developments this week. I'll start with those.

On Thursday, the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty on all eleven war crimes and crimes against humanity charges against him. Admittedly, there isn't all that much to say on this topic. The man ran a rebel movement that committed unspeakable atrocities. He got what he deserved. It's all ways a good day when men like this are brought to justice. At present, Mr. Taylor is under arrest pending sentencing two weeks from now.

The second development was Friday's concurrent elections in the General Assembly and Security Council the fill the vacant seat on the International Court of Justice. I'll start with a bit of background. The vacancy occurred last October, when King Abdullah II of Jordan name Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Kasawneh as his new Prime Minister. As Judge Al-Kasawneh was not one of the five judges whose term expired this February a special election was needed to fill his seat. 

India, Russia, Peru, Chile, and Colombia nominated Dalveer Bhandari, Senior Justice on the Supreme Court of India. The Philippines nominated Florentino Feliciano member of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal, and former President of the WTO Appellate Tribunal. Finally, Lebanon nominated Ghaleb Ghanem President of the Association of Francophone Supreme Courts and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Lebanon. With the explicit support of three members of the Security Council, including Russia and India, Judge Bhandari's election to the Court was all but guaranteed. Given these conditions, Judge Ghanem withdrew from the proceedings a week before the elections.

In spite of this, I'll offer my analysis of the three candidates. Judge Ghanem's election would have been the least perturbing to the composition of the Court. Like Judge Al-Kasawneh, he is an Arab Jurist from a civil law country operating under the Napoleonic code of France. Of the three candidates, Judge Feliciano is the most obviously qualified as an international judge. He was undoubtedly nominated, at least in part, because of his expertise in international economic law, since three of the thirteen cases pending before the ICJ have a significant economic component. Finally, Judge Bhandari's nomination was more political than anything else. While is obviously qualified as an international jurist, he is more well known for civil matters. For example, one of his judgement has significantly defined Indian divorce law. His nomination and the fact that it received broad support is largely due to the fact that India is one of, if not the most significant international player without representation on the ICJ. In the end, he received thirteen of fifteen votes on the Security Council and 127 of 180 votes in the General Assembly. Judge Bhandari will serve until the end of Judge Al-Kasawneh's term in 2018.

There were also further developments on the Syrian issue. The UN published its Preliminary Understanding with Syria regarding UNSMIS, outlining the rights and responsibilities of UNSMIS, the Syrian government and the opposition. Having read the document, I must admit its more than little naive. In a section titled Basic Assumptions, the UN states that for the purposes of the document it assumes that as of 10 April, Syria had taken measures to implement in good faith the Six-point plan of Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan.

The remaining issues at the UN this week that are of interest to me both dealt with Africa. On Monday, the Security Council considered the Secretary-General's report on the Western Sahara, and decided to extend the mandate of the peacekeeping mission there. MINURSO (french acronym for United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) represents, in my opinion, one of the most forgotten failures of the UN in recent years. Originally established in 1991, MINURSO's mandate was to oversee a ceasefire between the Moroccan Army and the Frente Prolisario, a militant faction representing the Saharawi people, and the organize a free and fair referendum on the national question of Western Sahara. While there continue to be isolated violent incidents, none of them are remotely close to bringing the region into out and out conflict. All told the security situation in the Western Sahara is more or less stable, and has been for the better part of the last decade.

In spite of this, we are no closer to a referendum than in 1992 when the situation was declared stable enough to proceed to voting. This is largely to due to Moroccan interference in MINURSO. As a result of strong French support, Morocco has been able effectively manipulate the mission to its own interests. For example, MINURSO is one of the few UN Missions without a human rights mandate. Further still, any reference to such a mandate was excluded, due to Moroccan censorship, from the Secretary-General's most recent report on the Mission in spite of requests from several country's to study the matter. At Monday's Security Council meeting, South Africa went so far as hint at violations of Article 100 of the UN Charter which requires the neutrality of the SG.

In contrast to the Western Sahara, the final issue that I will address this week is one of the UN's recent successes. On Thursday, the Security Council extended and modified the sanctions against Côte d'Ivoire. While not the sole factor, these sanctions helped bring an end to the Ivorian Civil War in 2007 and forced President Laurent Gbagbo to step down in 2011, after he had lost the 2010 election. The key factor here being proper targeting. In the case of Côte d'Ivoire, it was possible to clearly identify the sources of income the parties of the civil war used to fund their war efforts. Once under sanction, these sources began to dry up, and the flow of arms in the country was reduced, giving all parties more motivation to negotiate. Unfortunately, this model is not universally applicable.