Thirteen of the leading malaria experts in the world are accusing the World Bank of lying about its efforts to fight malaria: Today, 13 malaria specialists from around the world accuse the World Bank of reneging on its promise to spend at least $300m on malaria control in Africa. They say much of its spending from 2000 to 2005 has been concealed,...
The ICTR and Rwanda are quarreling again — this time over the ICTR's willingness to drop genocide charges in order to convince defendants to plead guilty. Last week the ICTR entered into such a plea bargain with Paul Bisengimana, who admitted to murder and extermination as crimes against humanity in connection with the massacre of nearly 1,000...
The company that makes and sells this t-shirt — to which I refuse to link out of principle — sponsors such high-profile conservative blogs as Instapundit, Powerline, Hugh Hewitt, Captain's Quarters, and Michelle Malkin. No additional commentary necessary. Sad tip-of-the-hat: Digby. ...
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1672 yesterday, imposing sanctions yesterday on four Sudanese considered responsible for the the atrocities in Darfur. The Resolution passed 12-0, with China, Russia and Qatar abstaining on the ground that sanctions would disrupt the reconciliation process. The sanctioned individuals are Major General Gaffar Mohamed Elhassan, commander of the Western Military Region for the Sudanese...
Posada's latest bid for freedom — applying for U.S. citizenship. His interview is set for next week. ...
A fascinating and extremely important trial began yesterday at the Hague. The defendant, Gus Kouwenhoven, is charged with committing various war crimes against Liberians and violating a UN arms embargo. Kouwenhoven, who is Dutch, was the general manager of the Oriental Timber Company, Liberia's largest timber company while Charles Taylor was in power. While in that...
From the Daily Telegraph: POLISH authorities have withdrawn permission for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar to be performed at Majdanek, the former Nazi concentration camp, after protests by Jewish groups. The Culture Ministry and the camp's management today said the performance by a local Polish theatre group could not go ahead. "The play was to break down barriers between people, but it turns...
Here's what's been happening in the world of the ICC: The UN Mission in the Congo, the ICC, and the governments of Germany and the DRC are working to transfer Ignace Murwanashyaka — the FDLR leader whose situation I discussed last week — to the ICC to stand trial. Their efforts are bound to further antagonize the Rwandan government, which...
US/EU efforts to convince the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel and disavow suicide bombings are not going very well. Russia has already pledged $10 million to the financially-strapped PA government; Iran has pledged $50 million, and Qatar has pledged $50 million. And now Saudi Arabia has pledged an additional $92 million. I don't know whether using financial assistance...
Exciting — and long overdue — news: Germany has agreed to open its Holocaust archives in Bad Arolsen to historians and the public. The archives, which have long been used by the International Red Cross to trace missing and dead Jews, contain between 30 and 50 million documents. I hope Roger will offer us his thoughts on this...
An appeals court in the Central African Republic has referred Ange Felix Patasse, the country's former president, and Jean-Pierre Bamba, the Democratic Republic of Congo's current vice-president, to the ICC. Security forces controlled by Patasse and backed by soldiers from Bemba's then-rebel army are accused of executing and raping civilians after they staved off an attempted coup in 2002....
The ICTY has held that Vladimir "Rambo" Kovacevic, a former office in the Yugoslav army, is mentally unfit to stand trial. According to the Tribunal, "[t]he accused does not have the capacity to plead, to understand the nature of the charges, to understand the course of proceedings, to understand the details of the evidence...
