International Criminal Justice
| Date | 01 September 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300318 |
| Author | David M. Malone |
| Published date | 01 September 2008 |
| Subject Matter | The Lessons of History |
| International Journal | Summer 2008 | 729 |
David Malone was recently appointed president of the International Development Research
Centre. From 2006 to 2008 he was Canada’s high commissioner to India. His most recent
book , with Simon Chesterman and Thomas M. Franck, is
The Law and Practice of the UN
(Oxford University Press, 2008). The views expressed in this essay are the author’s alone and
not those of the Canadian government.
July 2008 produced two major developments relating to international crim-
inal justice, highlighting again the political delicacy of this newly salient di-
mension of international relations. On 14 July, the prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant against serving Su-
danese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity, and
murder. Only a week later, on 21 July, the fugitive former president of the
Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadzic, was apprehended in Belgrade
and soon thereafter flown to The Hague to face the international criminal tri-
bunal for the former Yugoslavia. While Karadzic’s arrest was widely wel-
comed—he had forfeited over time any serious international support and
had lost the active backing of most Serbs—the ICC action against al-Bashir
proved highly controversial, not least within the Arab League and among a
number of African governments, producing calls for the UN security council
to “suspend” the ICC’s proceedings in this case for a year—as the ICC
statute’s article 16 empowers the council to do.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
David M. Malone
International
criminal justice
Just an expensive mirage?
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