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Humanitarian
law still has enormous unrealized potential to guide the worlds
statesmen in determining when regional disorders threaten the broader
peace. For the events of the past decade from the war in
Bosnia to the attacks of 9/11 -- have shown that war crimes and
crimes against humanity, coupled with impunity, are an alarm bell
signaling that far worse things are about to happen. Humanitarian
law was drafted on the ashes and ruins of disastrous past conflicts;
it is the law of "never again." But it cannot work unless
the major world power, the United States (and the leading regional
powers) shows respect for its own commitments and is seen to be
showing respect.
The
US governments unilateral reinterpretation of major elements
of the Third Geneva Convention (on Prisoners of War), and its refusal
to provide due process under any legal code to detainees at Guantanamo
Bay and other sites, sets a serious negative precedent. Lesser powers,
with aggressive intentions, will deduce that if the biggest single
power can ignore universal, ratified covenants, they can do the
same. This can lead to mayhem in far-flung places. Moreover, the
US governments approach can result in enormous future embarrassment
when it is determined, as I am sure it will be, that a significant
number of individuals was held indefinitely and without due cause.
The
US governments failure thoroughly to investigate atrocities
during the 2001 Afghan intervention, in particular, the murder by
suffocation of hundreds of Taliban prisoners, is another troubling
sign of disdain for the law by the worlds leading power. Its
worldwide campaign against the International Criminal Court, lacking
any defensible basis in fact, law, or logic, is seen by most of
the civilized world as a ludicrous quest that can only prove counter-productive
to the shared aims of world peace and order. There is no question
that the new courts statute and procedures deserve scrutiny
and improvement, but a frontal outside assault will hardly bring
about the desired result.
Roy
Gutman is a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of
Peace and President of the Crimes of War Project.
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