al-bashir.

Whether we can take the International Criminal Court seriously at all times, here they go indicting Sudanese head of state al-Bashir. He was accused on

… charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of the war in Darfur …

But, not genocide. While some were looking for that key word,

Two of three judges on the court panel which issued the warrant declined on the evidence currently before them to press charges of genocide. It said the prosecution had failed to provide reasonable grounds for believing that the Sudanese government had the specific intent to destroy three ethnic groups in Darfur.

Regardless, and based on the ICC’s track record with Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Kony and others, I can’t help but wonder, what’s next?

And, while browsing through all the opinions out there, I stumbled on a piece with a very strange juxtaposition: Archbishop Desmond Tutu (for the indictment) vs. Franklin Graham, son of famous preacher Billy Graham (against the indictment). Regardless of reputation, both are making viable points that have been brought up time and time again.

With the little I know about the peace vs. justice situation in Northern Uganda, I would argue that both are intertwined, as Tutu suggests, but must be dealt with in a fashion that cooperates with the cultural and social values of those most affected.

Regardless, a regime change in Sudan is imperative. The current Khartoum-based administration has caused pandemonium across the country, from the violent war in the South to Darfur and back. Securing their own riches while isolating (and terrorizing) the rest of the country into submission is not sustainable.

In the long run, this business of international law and human rights sparks a great debate. When reading briefs like this, where Egypt is opposed to the indictment, one realizes that the Western-model of human rights is contested by many. As far back as the Universal Declaraction of Human Rights, non-Western countries were opposing the arbitrary and Western-ruled idea of human rights, a form of ‘neo-colonialism’. While other peoples, like indigenous peoples, were complaining that their idea of human rights – secured in community rights, oral histories etc. – were being completely disregarded and ignored.

While I beleive it’s impossible to throw away the idea of basic human rights (everyone wants basic water, food and shelter for their families), it should be recognized that our interpretation of what this consists of (aside from the basics mentioned above) is the standing norm in law, while other opinions have been sidelined. And, once again, I’m not trying to say that human rights is not a positive development in our move towards global peace and cooperation, however, the way in which it has been formulated could be considered harmfully hegemonic.