The banality of good in UN tribunals

OP-ED | Ilana Bet-El

July 07, 2011|By Ilana Bet-El

THIS HAS been a busy time for international justice. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy and is also investigating post-election violence in Ivory Coast. In late May, Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, was finally arrested in Serbia and charged with crimes against humanity and genocide.

This is also the 50th anniversary of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Given the growing role of international courts, a look at the trial underscores the broad practice of judging crimes against humanity as part of conflict resolution.

The Eichmann trial lasted just eight months, and the opening speech of the chief prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, was, and possibly remains, a high point of legal oratory: simple, direct, and powerful. From the start, he made it clear that he spoke for the 6 million dead: “Their blood cries out, but their voice is stilled. Therefore will I be their spokesman. In their name will I unfold this terrible indictment.’’ And he did.

The visual impact of the trial was almost immediate, with Eichmann, the bespectacled middle-age man in a suit, his face often framed by heavy headphones through which he listened to the interpretation, encased in a glass booth.

The trial remains iconic in seeking international justice, due in large part to timing, speech, and visual impact. In these ways, the trial gripped an audience, explained the event, and imprinted its meaning: justice was seen and understood to be done in a clear and steady manner - relevant both to the victims and many millions of onlookers.

Unfortunately, none of these attributes are found in more recent attempts at prosecuting crimes against humanity. The Balkan wars of the 1990s and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda wrought the creation of special criminal tribunals, as did the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cambodia. Some of the courts are in The Hague, others are in or near the countries. They were all created at the behest of the UN Security Council, and operated by the United Nations - as opposed to the International Criminal Court, which is an independent permanent body.

There is a constant if minor drip of developments from the tribunals, as they incrementally grind through the process of justice. This is especially true of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in which the average trial lasts two years from start to finish.

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