On the Impotency of International Law in a System of Sovereign States: The Case of Gaza

The sheer brazenness with which countries ironically recognized as being sovereign states by international law ignore international law even in regard to human rights that seeks to place boundaries on said sovereignty reflects the impotency of international law, and thus even that which recognizes national sovereignty itself. For the rest of us, continuing to believe that upcoming cases before the International Court of Justice, the UN’s court, are of consequence and thus even worth paying attention to, demonstrates abject stupidity, as if we were herd animals without learning curves. Admittedly, the stubborn, self-aggrandizing governments are ethically worse than the world’s population that lets such governments blatantly and even explicitly ignore judicial rulings of the International Court of Justice (and the European Court of Human Rights), but culpability can also be gleamed from the public’s truly pathetic irrational belief that another case against a country that has just ignored a verdict of that very court might just work in curtailing human-rights abuses and outright, even genocide-scale, aggression that outstrips even the sin of retaliation. Either I am blind or the proverbial emperor is not wearing any clothes.

As a case in point, in January, 2024, the International Court of Justice announced its preliminary ruling on Israel’s military incursion into Gaza. “The state of Israel shall . . . take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention,” the court announced.[1] The court had not reached a verdict on whether Israel was committing a genocide, and but was saying that one could be in progress and thus Israel is obliged to see that it does not, and this includes allowing more humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinians. The health ministry in Gaza had reported that thousands of women and children were among the more than 25,000 people killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, which did not “differentiate between civilians and Hamas fighters.”[2] In addition, more than a million Palestinians there had become homeless. Because only 1,200 Israelis had died in the Hamas attack in October, 2023, the scale of the harm in Gaza is beyond the scope of “an eye for an eye” and retribution or retaliation.

Because we humans have flawed judgment concerning punishment for those who harm us, John Locke of the 17^th century in Europe claimed that a major legitimating function of a government is in providing impartial judges so that vigilantes don’t have to dispense justice in their own cases. He wrote, “it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends . . . therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men.”[3] We are too violent a species to be able to be fair judges against people who have rendered us as victims. I submit that this holds for sovereign states, which are in a state of nature, Locke insisted, with each other because there is no higher human power that can restrain their lust for violence that goes beyond justice and even retaliation. This is precisely why an international court with no enforcement power, such as in the UN having its own military force with which to “remind” wayward states that they had agreed to be bound by international law. The lack of any such army is, I submit, the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize and discuss. By the way, this is precisely why I view my non-academic short essays as a form of charity to my species in spite of itself. I don’t ask whether it deserves it—only whether my ideas can possibly help it. I suppose I am benevolent in spite of myself, for I am human, all too human.

Before the court’s preliminary decision, Israeli Prime Minister Ben Netanyahu had said that Israel’s “commitment to international law is unwavering,” and yet he added that the “charge of genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people should reject it.”[4] He would doubtless not be a fair judge in his own case, as he would doubtless throw that case out without letting it be heard. This is precisely why an international court is crucial, and, furthermore, that it must have a direct enforcement mechanism such that its verdicts will stick rather than be dismissed by a guilty defendant.

In its preliminary decision (not yet ruling on whether Israel was committing a genocide), “the court said Israel must restrain from the destruction of infrastructure, should support more humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza strip and prevent calls to commit genocide against the Palestinian people.”[5] In reaction to the decision, Netanyahu said, “Israel has an inherent right to defend itself.”[6] Exactly two weeks later, he announced that he had “ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion” of the city.[7] Rafah had been home to 280,000 people, but the addition of other Palestinians made homeless in other parts of Gaza increased the city’s population to 1.5 million.[8] Forcing that many people to move in a short time span could itself be considered a violation of human rights if not part of a genocide. Also, the planned invasion itself would likely violate the court’s decision, which specified that Israel must not destroy the infrastructure in Gaza any further.

As for the court’s insistence that Israel let in more humanitarian aid, Israel actually “imposed financial restrictions on the main U.N. agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians” in Gaza.[9] Not even on a humanitarian basis was the Israeli government willing to heed the decision of the court whose jurisdiction Israel had agreed to, and whose law Netanyahu himself had said he respects so much.

There should thus be scarcely any doubt as to whether Israel would adhere to the court’s decision on a case set to begin on February 19, 2024 “into the legality of Israel’ 57-year occupation of land sought for a Palestinian state.”[10] Rather than focusing on Israel’s war with Hamas, that case concerns “Israel’s open-ended occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.”[11] Palestinian representatives planned to “argue that the Israeli occupation is illegal because it has violated three key tenets” of international law: “the prohibition on territorial conquest by annexing large swaths of occupied land,” the “Palestinians’ right to self-determination,” and the prohibition of “a system of racial discrimination and apartheid.”[12] In reading about the upcoming case, I felt an instantaneous rush of hope that the issue that had led to the Hamas attack in 2023 might finally be definitively decided by a neutral court rather than by the warring parties themselves by sheer might and strife in lieu of weak negotiations and weak allies on both sides. I had momentarily neglected to consider Israel’s response to the court’s preliminary decision—namely in dismissing or ignoring it outright and perhaps even going even further by adding a forced exodus from Rafah before another ground invasion. If you tell another person not to sneeze in your face and yet it not only happens again, but at an even closer range, you would naturally conclude that it will happen again unless some obstacle is brought to bear on that person. My point is that an international system in which there are no viable and enforced constraints on state-actors is incompatible with there being real obstacles on the wayward states. Relying on pressure from allies or even an impromptu coalition “of the willing” is not reliable enough to count on as a counterweight to such a severe flaw in the very fabric of an international system of unfettered sovereign nation-states.

---

1. Thomson Reuters, “Israel Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on Temporary Measures,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. John Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True, Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government,” in The Selected Political Writings of John Locke, Paul Sigmund, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2005): 17-125, sec. 13, p. 22.
4. Thomson Reuters, “Israel Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on Temporary Measures,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26, 2024.
5. Brad Dress, “Netanyahu Casts Off Genocide Case, Vows to Push Ahead Against Hamas,” The Hill, January 26, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Najib Jobain and Josef Federman, “Israel Seeks to Evacuate Palestinians Jammed into a Southern Gaza City Ahead of an Expected Invasion,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.
8. John Gambrell and Phil Holm, “From 200K to 1.5M People: Startling Images Show the Ongoing War’s Impact to This Small Area in Gaza,” The Associated Press, February 8, 2024.
9. Julia Frankel, “Israel Is Holding Up Food for 1.1 Million Palestinians in Gaza, the Main UN Aid Agency There Says,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.
10. Mike Corder and Julia Frankel, “Top U.N. Court to Hold Hearings on Legality of Israeli Occupation,” The Associated Press, February 18, 2024.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.

Oppenheimer

An artificial sun rose on an otherwise dark night when the nuclear-bomb test named Trinity ushered in the era wherein our species’ aggressive instinct could render homo sapiens extinct. Given the salience of that instinctual urge—for we are related to the chimpanzee species—the wise (i.e., sapiens) species can be its own undoing. For it took a lot of intelligence in sub-atomic physics to invent the nuclear bomb, yet very little smarts went into deciding to use it against Japan, an enemy that would have lost anyway, in order to save American lives from having to invade the mainland (as if conventional bombs could not have reduced the casualties). Even less thought was put into the need to contain the proliferation of nuclear bombs. Expediency without heeding long-term risk is not a virtue. Kant wrote that even if our species were to institute a world federation, presumably having nation-states that would be semi-sovereign as a check against global totalitarianism, peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. This does not speak well of human nature, and this in turn renders the Trinity test something less than redeeming. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” In the film, Oppenheimer (2023), Robert Oppenheimer reads from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as a woman is on top of him in sexual intercourse. The irony of him being an instrument of mass destruction as director of the Manhattan Project and yet being engaged in potentially reproducing life with a woman is doubtlessly the point of that scene. Hindus who leap to the conclusion that Nolan is insulting their religion miss this point. Had the director included a scene in which Oppenheimer is praying, for example for the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time, a quote from the film, Gettysburg (1993) would have been similarly fitting. In that film, Col. Chamberlain of the Union army remarks, “What a piece of work is man . . . in action how like an angel!” Sgt. Kilrain replies, “Well, if he’s an angel, all right then . . . But he damn well must be a killer angel.” In the nuclear age, killer angel takes on added significance. The question is perhaps whether we have left angel behind as our species’ intelligence has outdone itself, whether in terms of developing nuclear weapons or heedlessly emitting so much carbon that the Earth could someday be unsuitable for us. Or, can we catch up by inventing antidotes? 

The full essay is at "Oppenheimer."

Applying Justice to Nazi Jurists in the Context of the Cold War

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. 

The full essay is at "Judgment at Nuremberg."

Saudi Arabia Beheads a Member of the Royal Family: Justice for All, Atrociously

On October 18, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed a member of the royal family for committing murder during a brawl. Prince Turki bin Saud bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabeer was put to death most likely by beheading in a public square—as this was the usual method at the time. As horrific as such an execution is, the point that law applies to everyone is laudable—especially “on point” for countries in which the rich can “get away with murder” by hiring the best (and most expensive) lawyers.  The atrocious means of execution coupled with the dictum that the law really does apply to everyone renders this case particularly difficult to analyze from an ethical perspective.

“The greatest thing is that the citizen sees the law applied to everyone, and that there are not big people and other small people,” Abdul-Rahman al-Lahim, a prominent Saudi lawyer wrote.[1] In other words, the verdict and sentence sent the message that no one is above the law. To be sure, thousands of people are in the Saudi royal family enjoying perks not available to the rest of Saudi Arabia’s 20 million people; yet that the member executed was from a prestigious arm of the family sufficiently makes the point that no one is above the law.

This lesson is a valuable one for the United States, as financiers got away with fraudulently mislabeling the risk of sub-prime mortgage-based bonds before the financial crisis of 2008. Yet, interestingly, the Saudis could look to the United States for a lesson on how to execute people humanely. I submit that this combination of lessons demonstrates that a country can be very ethical in one sense yet abysmal in another. This point in turn impedes claims that some countries are more humane, or advanced ethically, than others. Within a culture, insistence on justice in one sense can coexist with toleration for injustice in another sense. Put another way, the human mind seems able to compartmentalize justice, without realizing the cognitive dissidence involved.

---

1. Ben Hubbard, “Saudi Prince Is Executed for Murder,” The New York Times, October 19, 2016.

Adolf Eichmann: Justice or Retribution by the Victims?

In February, 2016, 94-year-old Reinhold Hanning, a former guard at Auschwitz, went on trial in Detmold, Germany for being an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people. Back in 1961, Adolf Eichmann had been tried in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people. I submit that the situs for the Hanning trial is proper ethically and legally, which is to say that Eichmann too should have been tried in Germany rather than in Israel.

Reinhold Hanning, center, on trial for 170,000 counts of accessory to murder in Germany. Proving that he himself facilitated the murders may be more difficult than one might assume; hence the importance of a fair hearing by neutral judges. Associated Press.

In his version of the social contract, John Locke argues that one advantage of leaving the state of nature in favor of forming a state is impartial justice can be enjoyed over victims exacting retribution for crimes against them directly. Put another way, a victim being the prosecutor and judge in a matter in which the crime is against the victim constitutes a conflict of interest. Any of us, as a victim, would naturally tend to be overly severe, even if we delude ourselves as to our objectivity.

I submit that in kidnapping Eichmann and forcing him to go on trial in Jerusalem, the Israeli government and its three appointed judges acted not only illegally in terms of international law at the time, but also unethically in exacting retribution as victims (i.e., being of the Jewish people). In terms of international law at the time, the state of Israel did not exist during the 1933-1945 Nazi period, so that country had no legal basis in prosecuting war crimes. The kidnapping was thus illegal--hardly different than a bunch of victims kidnapping someone thought to have violated them or their group and bringing the new victim back to a location where they could do what they wished.

Legally, either Germany or one of the victors of World War II could legitimately have tried Eichmann. By 1961, Germany would likely have preference because the crimes took place there and the war had been over for over a decade.

In terms of the conflict of interest, the president of the court in the Eichmann trial responded to the defense lawyer's point that the victims could not possibly be neutral by stating that because no one could possibly be neutral in the face of such a horrific crime--and the holocaust was indeed that--he might as well be the one to try to be objective. This faulty logic dismisses the very real possibility that someone else with less emotional attachment in the case could achieve something closer to neutrality. It was not as if everyone in the world were as emotionally biased as the victims and people in general who identify themselves as Jewish. A good means of sniffing out a conflict of interest is when the person charged with being in one makes a rather stunningly faulty rationale for the conflict not being material or even relevant. Even the person claiming, "I won't be subject to the conflict of interest" is suspect, as it is not outside the lines of exploiting the conflict.

Even the Supreme Court of Israel showed symptoms of being ensnared in the conflict of interest. To the defense's claim that a 1950 Israeli law should not be applied retroactively to cover conduct which occurred even before the state of Israel itself and in another country no less, the Court answered that if the crime is heinous enough, laws can be applied retroactively (and to conduct in another country). So ex post facto is apparently valid if the judge feels the crime is a really bad one. That a supreme court would engage in such an atrocious lack of fairness in its "legal reasoning" is itself a sign that the conflict of interest was indeed being exploited by the victims and their group.

The world itself, especially the victors of WWII, was culpable as well, in that the global powers ignored the conflict of interest or at least did not intervene in the interest of civilized justice. As war crimes were included in the indictment, the Allies could legitimately have stepped in to prevent the exacted retribution. Impartial justice, such as hopefully Hanning was getting in Germany in 2016, is one way the world's powers can be distinguished from the justice perpetrated by the Nazis. Perhaps it is in the nature of things that the victim becomes like the victimizer without realizing it. Hence, Locke was on solid ground in claiming as a benefit of civil society that retribution is taken away from victims.

Reforming Chinese Courts: A Fool’s Errand?

With Chinese courts revising more than 1,300 criminal decisions in 2014, the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, Zhou Qiang, told the national legislature in March 2015, “With regard to wrongful convictions, we feel a deep sense of self-blame and demand that courts at all levels draw a profound lesson.”[1] Six months earlier, President Xi Jinping had initiated legal reforms on the premise that the Communist Party needed a “better-functioning” legal system in order to be able to govern.[2] The question is whether this push will come to anything substantial.

According to The Wall Street Journal, political considerations are one reason why the courts have had so many wrongful convictions, including in capital crimes. “The police, prosecutors and the courts are often coordinated by the party based on interests other than determining the truth,” Joshua Rosenzweig, a human-rights researcher, explains.[3] This collusion is vulnerable to the human presumption of infallibility. The police or government officials presume that “they have their man,” and the prosecutors and even judges act as reinforcers (or enforcers). As a result, the defense attorneys can only put up defenses they know will not make any difference to the outcome of the cases.

In Western jurisprudence, the conventional wisdom is that only a judiciary independent from the government and police can resist “political considerations” and intimidation. Even when formally separate, a judiciary can still be subject to pressure, however. Chinese firewalls can fail when a power-gradient is sufficiently steep. A judge facing re-election, for example, may not want to “rock the boat” with “the powers that be” years before the election, lest other candidates be used to take the judge out.

Unfortunately for the Chinese people, President Xi continued the requirement that the legal system serve the interests of the Communist Party.[4] So for all the atoning for miscarriages of justice, the government’s efforts to reform the legal system in order to instill public confidence in it and thus in the party as well, the collusion—and thus the wrongful convictions—would likely continue. Put another way, without fundamentally altering the design of the system that includes the government, the Communist Party, the police, lawyers, and the courts, urging judges to be more careful can only be a fool’s errand.

---

[1] Josh Chin, “Top Judge Apologizes for Wrongful Convictions,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

China’s Increasing International Role: A Historical Departure

Historically, China was isolationist. The Opium Wars in the mid-19^th century is a good illustration of why. From this context, China’s announcements of a series of international trade and finance initiatives by which China would assume a larger leadership role internationally are stunning. Doubtless the enhanced role is in line with China’s geopolitical and economic interests. After all, political realism is hardly a dead theory in the 21^st century. Even so, the impact of the reversal on the culture is significant, and thus worthy of study. Specifically, the traditional mistrust of foreigners is likely to diminish. As it does, the Chinese will be more likely to consider and even advocate for economic and political principles, such as liberty and rights, that are valued elsewhere in the world but not so much in China. The result could be increased political instability. In short, the initiatives timed to coincide with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November 2014 could eventually weaken the Chinese government’s grip on power.

In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), relations with non-Chinese peoples were conducted by “a variety of bureaus and agencies that, in different ways, implied or stated the cultural inferiority and geographical marginality of foreigners, while also defending the state against them.”[1] Even though countries such as Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam “shared many of the basic values of Chinese culture,” the emissaries “were expected to make a formal acknowledgement of China’s cultural and political prestige by [using] a language of subservience in diplomatic documents and by making the ritual prostrations (kowtow) before the Chinese emperor in royal audiences. In return, these countries were allowed to conduct a controlled volume of trade with China.”[2] Interestingly, a certain subservience and even inferiority may have been implied at the APEC meeting in Beijing in 2014 to the extent that China held huge quantities of foreign currencies in reserve (which could be used to invest in other economies) and foreign government debt (e.g., U.S. Treasuries). In this sense, China’s enhanced leadership role internationally is in line with the history. Even the taking on of a leadership role implies that the resulting increased trade and foreign economic relations more generally would be controlled in their contours, as the leadership was oriented to designing international economic infrastructure, and no system-design is perfectly neutral.

Just before the APEC meeting, the Chinese government announced a free-trade agreement with South Korea; both the timing of the announcement and the taking of initiative on the agreement imply significant—though not complete—control. Additionally, Chinese regulators “approved a plan to open Chinese stock markets wider to foreign investors by linking exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai.”[3] Simply in having a plan, the Chinese government was controlling how foreign investors would relate to the stock exchanges. Put another way, control is implied in having a plan, rather than alternatively watching foreign investors come in do as they will (e.g., speculate by selling-short, thereby trashing even some sound companies). Lastly, the Chinese government announced a $40 billion Chinese-financed fund to improve trade links between Asian economies. The money alone implies control. At the very least, the Chinese would have a big say in how the links are made.

The extent of the Chinese involvement in international economic relations is startling from a historical perspective, but the degree of control implied is not. Historically, the Chinese had good reason to distrust foreign governments. On August 29, 1842, the Chinese signed the British treaty of Nanjing in what is now known as the first opium war. Facing an epidemic of addiction, the Qing government had outlawed trade in the drug. In the treaty, British opium merchants could live and operate in five Chinese cities—Canton, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai. Although only the latter was a boom town, illegal opium would come into China at a rate of at least 20,000 chests a year.[4] Additionally, the island of Hong Kong was to possessed in perpetuity by the British.[5] The United States, France, and a host of other countries also extracted concessions. All told, the Qing “had lost control of vital elements of China’s commercial, social, and foreign policies.”[6] As if this were not enough, the Tianjin treaty in 1858 opened all Chinese ports to British opium traders in spite of the fact that the possession and sale of the narcotic was still illegal under Chinese law. To pressure the Qing into signing the treaty that implied deep disrespect for Chinese law within China, the British burnt down the Yuan Ming Yuan, the exquisite summer palace on October 18, 1860. The Chinese were humiliated at such a disgrace.[7]

Deep scares inexorably become etched in the subterranean contours of a society’s perspective of the world. An insistence or at least a proclivity to control relations with foreign powers naturally goes along with an inner sense of insecurity masked as an insistence to relate only from a position of power—whether it be militarily or in having massive reserves of foreign currencies or debt as assets. What has changed is the extent of China’s interaction with other countries, economically and politically. Ironically, from the controlled design of international economic regimes, increased exchange can be expected—not only of economic goods and services under free trade, but also of ideological principles. In this sense, the Chinese government risks opening China up beyond what that governing party can control.

---

1. Jonathon Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2^nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 117.

2. Ibid, p. 118.

3. Joe McDonald and Youkyung Lee, “Asia-Pacific Leaders Agree to Work Toward Possible Adoption of Trade Deal,” The Associated Press, November 11, 2014.

4. Spence, Search for Modern China, p. 164.

5. Ibid., pp. 160-61.

6. Ibid., p. 163.

7. Ibid., p. 182.

Former Liberian President Gets 50 Years for War Crimes

In the 50 year sentence handed to  former Liberian president Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone meeting at the Hague on May 30, 2012, the world came one step closer to being able to hold dictators accountable for war crime atrocities that go even beyond the violation of basic human rights. In particular, the prosecutor described, "The purposely cruel and savage crimes committed included public executions and amputations of civilians, the display of decapitated heads at checkpoints, the killing and public disembowelment of a civilian whose intestines were then stretched across the road to make a check point, public rapes of women and girls, and people burned alive in their homes.”[1] Insisting that he never knowingly assisted in the crimes, Taylor claimed that what he did “was done with honor.”[2] He maintained that he had been “convinced that unless there was peace in Sierra Leone, Liberia would not be able to move forward.”[3] Nevertheless, that he paid thugs in blood diamonds for the crimes means that he could be held accountable for the misdeeds themselves.

Of particular note, the conviction was the first of a former head of state since WWII. The judge stressed that the “special status of Mr. Taylor as a head of state puts him in a different category of offenders for the purpose of sentencing.”[4] The judge added that the crimes were of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality. The lives of many more innocent civilians in Sierra Leone were lost or destroyed as a direct result of his actions.”[5] That Taylor did not carry out the atrocities himself, as in raping a daughter while the father is forced to watch, or disemboweling a man so his intestines can be used at a border crossing, does not detract from his culpability. Yet the distance from the crimes themselves enabled Taylor to show (and presumably feel) no remorse as the sentence was being handed down. To be sure, he cannot be forced to recognize the sordidness of his role or feel contrition. Cognitive dissidence and sociopathic blockage of conscience can permanently forestall such a reckoning.

Even if the defendant never “gets the message” on account of his sociopathy, the world came one step closer to telling sitting heads of government around the world that they had better be careful not to violate others’ human rights lest they too find themselves spending decades in a cell. Yet more is needed to make this deterrent a reality. 

Because the court that convicted Taylor is not international, the International Criminal Court (ICC) could not be expected to benefit directly. Governments such as those in the United States that are not members of the International Criminal Court marginalize the court's legitimacy and effectiveness because the court's lack of jurisdiction suggests or implies that public officials can get away with violating human rights. Governments not subject to the ICC should be pressured to join (perhaps even as a condition for continued membership in the UN). Additionally, the ICC needs more power in being able to arrest indicted officials, whether in or out of office, in countries subject to the court.  The United Nations could draw from members' military forces to form a special force that could have access to the territory of any member for the specific purpose to arrest and transfer any former or sitting official indicted by the ICC. Economic and political sanctions would automatically kick in for any member refusing the special force such access. This would not apply to any UN members who are not also members of the ICC, though ideally every member of the UN would also be subject to the ICC. While such a system may seem unrealistic as of 2012, the proposal is at least possible. With the world heading in the right direction with respect to holding violators of human rights accountable, it is advisable that such proposals are explored and discussed lest the momentum be squandered in line with the self-interest of people like Charles Taylor. 

1. Marlise Simons and David Goodman, “Judge Gives Taylor 50 Years for ‘Heinous’ Crimes in War,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012. 

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.