International Organizations

Leading up to today's meeting of the African Union in Libya, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been a sore point for Sudan's president Omar Bashir, who was indicted by the ICC last July for war crimes related to violence in Darfur. His indictment has led to protests against the court in Khartoum like one pictured above on May 27, 2009.

Bashir, along with other AU leaders like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi have criticized the court's focus on Africa, and even gone as far as to propose in advance of the AU meeting that states should withdraw from the Rome Treaty which established the court.

Pushing back, however, have been advocates of the ICC including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times, he defended the court against its African critics:

One must begin by asking why African leaders shouldn’t celebrate this focus on African victims. Do these leaders really want to side with the alleged perpetrators of mass atrocities rather than their victims? Is the court’s failure to date to answer the calls of victims outside of Africa really a reason to leave the calls of African victims unheeded?

Moreover, in three of these cases, it was the government itself that called for ICC intervention — the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda. The fourth case, that of Darfur, was selected notby the international court but forwarded by the U.N. Security Council.

The I.C.C. represents hope for victims of atrocities and sends a message that no one is above the law. That hope and message will be undermined if the African Union condemns the court because it has charged an African head of state. The African Union should not abandon its promise to fight impunity. Unless indicted war criminals are held to account, regardless of their rank, others tempted to emulate them will not be deterred, and African people will suffer.

It doesn't look like the AU will actually decide anyone should withdraw, but the ICC is still under fairly heavy fire from other areas.  A recent article in the World Affairs Journal bytwo Darfur experts, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal blames the ICC's controversy and dysfunctional dynamics on its Argentine lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. In particular they criticize his handling of the Bashir indictment and his continuing to push for a genocide charge that was rejected as too thin by ICC judges. As the Washington Post's Colum Lynch reported yesterday, there is significant concern that Moreno-Ocampo's efforts could undermine peace negotiations in Sudan.

Regardless of whether Moreno-Ocampo remains in charge, the dilemma of the ICC in the foreseeable future is to figure out how to position itself as an arbiter of international law, not political jockeying. In an interview last year in Uganda, ICC Registrar Silvana Arbia addressed a similar question to that now being asked in regard to Sudan: Shouldn't the ICC be willing to be flexible to give peace agreements their best chance of success? Like her boss, she argued that allowing such machinations would undermine the legitimacy of the court, noting that "the warrants issued by the ICC cannot be used as a condition to negotiate a peace agreement."

But with so much scorn and a suspect arrested for only one of its outstanding warrants -- former Congo rebel commander Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo -- the ICC needs help if it is to accomplish its mission of discouraging impunity. Even if no one withdraws (and Chile joined this week), few governments have thus far been willing to take much actionon the ICC's behalf. For now, it remains stuck with limited funding and no enforcement mechanism.

To preserve the ICC's relevance, the trial of Gombo will need to go very well, and some sort of progress will be needed on the Bashir case. What are the odds either of these will happen?

ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

A NATO source tells Eurasianet that Azerbaijan is now more likely to join NATO than Ukraine or Georgia:

"Earlier, the perception in both Brussels [North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] headquarters] and Baku was that Georgia should integrate into NATO first and Azerbaijan should follow," the source said. "However, the situation has changed and it might be that in the year to come Azerbaijan will become the frontrunner. Baku may enter NATO earlier than Ukraine and Georgia."

After Georgia’s 2008 war with Russia, "[m]any NATO member-states believe that . . . it is simply impossible to provide membership to Georgia," the source continued.

Ukraine’s domestic divisions over NATO and political turmoil have reduced its membership chances, he said. "It is unclear who will represent the Ukrainian government in six months or a year and what its position on NATO membership will be."

By comparison, Azerbaijan appears a bastion of stability. Among its other "strong advantages" are the country’s "strong cultural links" with NATO member Turkey and its strategic importance for the planned Nabucco and TGI (Turkey-Greece-Italy) gas pipelines, projects which "will deepen Western support [for] Azerbaijan in the coming years," according to the source.

Interestingly, a large part of the reason Azerbaijan is now in a better spot for NATO membership is that its government never lobbied particularly hard to join. Ukraine and Georgia, where this has been a long-standing priority, invited both Russia and internal critics to try to prevent them from joining.

For a number of reasons explained in the article, Azerbaijan still has a long way to go before it can join, but it does seem as if the best way for ex-Soviet countries to join Nato might be to act like they don't actually want to. 

The Organization of American States welcomes Cuba back into the fold:

Foreign ministers of the Organization of American States have voted to lift the suspension of Cuba, apparently paving the way for it to rejoin.

Revolutionary Cuba was suspended from the Washington-based organisation in 1962 over its 'incompatible' adherence to Marxism-Leninism."

Though former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was said to be uninterested by the development, the lifting of the ban is another signal that relations are improving between the Caribbean state and its neighbors.

For those who're counting, the embargo is 47 years old.

ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images

Agim Ceku, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army who was attending a conference on demobilizing guerilla movments in Colombia, has been expelled from the country after he was placed on an Interpol "red list" at the request of Serbia:

The director of Colombia's DAS security agency, Felipe Munoz, told the AP that Serbia sought the expulsion after Ceku's arrival for the conference, which was organized by President Alvaro Uribe's peace commissioner and attended by Uribe himself as well as by Guatemala's president, Alvaro Colom.

The Interpol-issued notices alert member nations that a person is wanted for possible extradition but does not force them to arrest or expel the individual. Munoz said Colombian law compelled the Ceku expulsion.

During the 1998-99 Kosovo war Ceku was the military head of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army.

Ceku says Serbia wanted him expelled because he was the "hero of the conference" and getting too much attention. 

This comes two weeks after Interpol redlisted Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales who has sought refuge in Peru after being charged with corruption by Hugo Chávez's government.

To my mind, these two cases raise the question of whether Interpol is allowing itself to be used by governments to crack down on political opponents. Interpol's constitution states:

It is strictly forbidden for the Organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.

I don't know enough about Ceku or Rosales to form an opinion on their guilt or innocence, but I think it's fairly indisputable that both indictments at least have a "political character." With Chávez requesting that a second political opponent be redlisted, it might be time for the organization to review its procedures.

Two out of four chapters of the IMF's major World Economic Outlook are available -- the other two are expected on April 22. 

The short of it? Bad news.

Chapter three includes a long comparison of the current Great Recession with the Great Depression of the 1920s. Ours is now a global down-turn, a "synchronized downturn," the paper argues -- that makes it worse. The only available counterballast lies in coordinated, synchronized governmental spending. Nevertheless, there are worrisome parallels.

There is continued pressure on asset prices, lending remains constrained by financial sector deleveraging and widespread lack of confidence in financial intermediaries, financial shocks have affected real activity on a global scale, and inflation is decelerating rapidly and is likely to approach values close to zero in a number of countries. Moreover, declining activity is beginning to create feedback effects...

The fourth chapter takes a look at how the crisis originated in advanced economies, and spread like wildfire to emerging economies.

As the crises in advanced economies continue to deepen, and trade and capital flows decline further, exchange rates and financial systems in emerging economies could come under more severe pressure. In turn, a broad-based economic and financial collapse in emerging economies would have a significant negative impact on the portfolios of advanced economies....

In light of such cross-country spillovers, there is a strong case for a coordinated approach to a range of policies...

 So, some predictions for chapters one and two, and for the IMF in general. 

• We hear that IMF is forecasting a one-percent shrinkage in global GDP in 2009, the first shrinkage since World War II. It expects a recovery of around 1.8 percent of GDP next year, a third of that recovery due directly to governmental stimulus.

• And we hear that the IMF intends to play a much larger "macroprudential" regulatory role in the future, possibly by creating a new board with many more members from emerging markets and new voting rules.

• We're looking for more details on the expansion of the IMF's special drawing rights, high-access precautionary arrangement, and flexible credit line programs -- the latter two will be more important than the former one, we think. The report warns strongly that simultaneous recessions require coordinated and simultaneous responses -- the IMF is playing a huge role there.