Mali Women's Rights Bill Halted

Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure has decided not to sign the country's new family bill into law; instead he sent it back to the parliament for review. The law was protested by Muslim groups.

Some of the provisions that have proved controversial give more rights to women.

For example, under the new law women are no longer required to obey their husbands, instead husbands and wives owe each other loyalty and protection.

Women get greater inheritance rights, and the minimum age for girls to marry in most circumstances is raised to 18.

One of the other key points Muslims have objected to is the fact that marriage is defined as a secular institution.

According to BBC, this is a political defeat for President Toure, who was a strong supporter of the bill.

Memory in the Aftermath of an Atrocity

In Strength in What Remains, writer Tracy Kidder tells the true story of Deogratias Niyizonkiza, a 24-year-old man who survived the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda. Johann Hari reviews the book for Slate:

Deogratias fled across a river already beginning to choke with Tutsi corpses into the forests. After days hiding out in the woods—to echoed screams—he realized he had to get out of Burundi. He thought he had an option for safety—to make his way across the border to Rwanda. He nearly didn't make it. He was stumbling from one catastrophe to another—straight into the heart of the Rwandan genocide. The president there was murdered, too, and the extermination of nearly 1 million people—mostly by machete, wielded at high speed–erupted. It took 100 days. "Before the end of the night, the cockroaches are not going to wake up again," the mobs would sing on their killing frenzies.

And suddenly Deogratias was standing in an American airport, with $200 in his pocket and trauma cluttering his head, claiming he had work to do in New York City. A friend had pointed him toward Burundi's airport and urged him to get as far away as he could. He slept in boarded-up buildings and in Central Park and marvelled: "Almost everyone looked happy. Or at least no one looked alarmed. And no one looked terrified. These were people just going about their business, greeting their friends and their families, as if they didn't know there were places where dogs were trotting about with human heads in their mouths. But how could they not know?"
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Deogratias seems to have come to terms with his memories of the genocide by convincing himself that the populations of both countries were innocent, and even the perpetrators—who remain faceless and nameless and off-stage for virtually the entire narrative—were simply "misled." They didn't know what they were doing; they were deceived. But this was a grassroots genocide, stoked by governments but carried out—with horrific efficiency—by ordinary people. Those rows of bodies I looked at were carved up by their neighbors, who were staring them in the face. It's hard for the reader to escape the conclusion that Deogratias can live with what happened and build his hospital and do good only by lying to himself about the nature of the recent past.

This raises the chewy problem of why Kidder is telling this story. Is it primarily an inspirational tale of an immigrant-made-good, a repudiation of Lou Dobbs-style bigotry? If so, his book succeeds 10 times over in an uncomplicated way. Or does Kidder believe primarily in the need to record accurately what happened during the darkest moments in human history?

The Right Way to Help

I finally went to one of the few museums in DC you have to pay to enter- the Newseum. It was a terrific experience and totally worth it! There is an interactive exhibit on ethics and one of the questions revolved around this famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photo:




The photo, of a Sudanese toddler on her way to a food distribution center, was taken by South African freelance photographer Kevin Carter. In 1993, Carter made a trip to document the famine in Sudan:

Immediately after their plane touched down in the village of Ayod, Carter began snapping photos of famine victims. Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. "He was depressed afterward," Silva recalls. "He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter."

After another day in Sudan, Carter returned to Johannesburg. Coincidentally, the New York Times, which was looking for pictures of Sudan, bought his photograph and ran it on March 26, 1993. The picture immediately became an icon of Africa's anguish. Hundreds of people wrote and called the Times asking what had happened to the child (the paper reported that it was not known whether she reached the feeding center); and papers around the world reproduced the photo. Friends and colleagues complimented Carter on his feat. His self-confidence climbed.

However, some critics questioned his ethics:

"The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering," said the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, "might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Even some of Carter's friends wondered aloud why he had not helped the girl.

Two months after receiving a Pulitzer Prize, Carter committed suicide. The Newseum exhibit asks visitors to choose between two options, if they had been in Carter's position: 1) Helping the little girl and not taking a photo and 2) Taking the photo and not helping the girl. About 70% of the visitors choose the first option. Interestingly, about 70% of the journalists the Newseum polled chose the second option. One of the rationales given is that the awareness raised by the picture likely led to many more lives being saved.

This morning, I heard an interview with R. Dwayne Betts about his memoir, "A Question of Freedom," which recounts his coming of age in prison after he committed a carjacking. When Scott Simon pressed him to discuss what it was in prison that he had seen and could "never really recover from," Betts responded:

In a way it's difficult to talk about it, because, one, it didn't happen to me, so I sort of feel like I'm selling the pain of other people when I start telling all of these stories.

I think this is what some people thought Kevin Carter did. But then again, he put himself out there by going to Sudan and taking a picture that ultimately made a huge difference- is it fair to criticize him for not helping the "right" way? Of course, in the end, he could have taken the photo AND helped the child. After doing what his job as a professional photographer, he could have responded with personal compassion...

In a way, this criticism reminds me of this previous post on an op-ed by Marshall Kim, a Cambodian-born American who criticized a trial before the Special Tribunal for Cambodia, saying that it was "too late" for justice. Arguably, it's always too late by the time the UN creates an international criminal tribunal or a hybrid tribunal. This is one of the reasons why I'm drawn to refugee law- the law can be a very powerful tool to help people in real time, rather than just to compensate them for atrocities they have suffered or to punish those who have committed the atrocities. But is it necessarily wrong to eventually try to do the right thing? Maybe it is, especially in a world where resources are finite and could be better spent on "improving the lives of young Cambodians" as Kim suggests.

An International Tribunal to Try Guantánamo Detainees?

Guénaël Mettraux, international criminal tribunal defense lawyer and author of “The Law of Command Responsibility” has a proposal in the New York Times:

Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect of a fair trial or delivering them to undemocratic governments are alternatives not worthy of the Obama administration or of the United States.

America’s own endeavors at Nuremberg offer a way out of this impasse: an international tribunal for detainees. Such a tribunal would allow the Obama administration to finally try these individuals and close down Guantánamo — and it would bring the nation back within the tradition of law and justice that it so forcefully defended six decades ago.

I like this idea. An international tribunal could be a really good compromise between those who would prefer that the Guantánamo detainees be tried by military tribunals and those that would like to see them tried as criminals in civilian courts. Granted, "The War on Terror" is pretty different from Mettraux's primary example, World War II, which had come to a clear end by the time of the Nuremberg Tribunals. However, his other examples, like the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals were created during the conflicts they were to address. The Lebanon tribunal is a good example of how terrorism would be addressed.

Fighting Poverty by Helping Women

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have written a great article for the New York Times Magazine on the importance of improving the lives of women and girls in the developing world. It's adapted from their book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”

In the early 1990s, the United Nations and the World Bank began to proclaim the potential resource that women and girls represent. “Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Larry Summers wrote when he was chief economist of the World Bank. Private aid groups and foundations shifted gears as well. “Women are the key to ending hunger in Africa,” declared the Hunger Project. The Center for Global Development issued a major report explaining “why and how to put girls at the center of development.” CARE took women and girls as the centerpiece of its anti-poverty efforts. “Gender inequality hurts economic growth,” Goldman Sachs concluded in a 2008 research report that emphasized how much developing countries could improve their economic performance by educating girls.

Read the whole thing.

World Humanitarian Day...

is today. The UN General Assembly created it to remember those who have lost their lives while providing humanitarian aid.



UPDATE 8/20: On World Humanitarian Day, UNHCR announced the first phase of its plan to relocate some Somali refugees from the Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya to the Kakuma camp in northwest Kenya. The Dadaab camp house 3 times the residents it was intended to accommodate. The US Department of State announced a pledge of $160 million to support international humanitarian assistance.

Event in DC: Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion

I heard about this on the radio this morning:

On Mon., August 24 at 7pm, Woolly Mammoth co-hosts a screening of the acclaimed documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell with a panel discussion to follow. Community Partner co-host organizations include the World Organization for Human Rights USA, InterAction, Peace X Peace, and the Washington, DC Film Society.

At Landmark E Street Cinema (E Street, NW, betw. 10th & 11th). The screening and panel are FREE, but reservations are encouraged at screening@woollymammoth.net

Panel: Dr. Patricia Morris, Exec. Director, Peace X Peace (Moderator), with Piper Hendricks, Int'l. Justice Project Dir, World Organization for Human Rights USA.

Named Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the gripping account of a group of brave and visionary women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn to shreds by a decades-old civil war. The women's historic yet unsung achievement finds voice in a narrative that intersperses contemporary interviews, archival images, and scenes of present-day Liberia together to recount the experiences and memories of the women who were instrumental in bringing lasting peace to their country.

This is in conjunction with the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company's world premiere of the play "Eclipsed," which is about the lives of five Liberian women during Liberia's civil war.

ICTY

Again, my apologies for the light posting, especially in the later part of the summer. Unfortunately, my dog had to be put down a few days after the bar exam... he was 16 years old and had cancer, but it was still very difficult.

I am finally back on track and getting ready for what's next. In September, I will be starting an internship with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)in the Hague! I will be working for the Office of the President for about 3 months.

I've been reading up on the Yugoslav wars. I read Zlata's Diary, which is a young girl's firsthand account of how life in Sarajevo changed forever. I'm now reading Emir Suljagic's Postcards from the Grave, which recounts how the author escaped from Srebrenica.

This afternoon, I happened to catch Michele Martin's interview with Bosnian-born author Aleksandar Hemon about his book, Love and Obstacles. The book is a collection of short stories that draws on Hemon's experience in Sarajevo. I'm thinking about adding this to my list, if I have any time left before I leave!

I will be posting about my experiences at the ICTY on this blog, so stay tuned!