U.S. Institute of Peace Examines Future of Atrocity Law

On Jan. 17, the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC hosted a briefing by its own Senior Fellow David Scheffer on the future of atrocity law. Since Sept. 11, atrocity law has become a debated issue because how it is defined will determine the direction of the U.S.-led war against terrorism.

The difficulty of determining what laws were violated on Sept. 11 made it clear, Scheffer said, that the U.S. does not have a clear definition of atrocity law. He proceeded to provide a few fundamental defining points: Atrocity crimes, Scheffer said, are orchestrated, involve a large number of victims, prisoners of war, or combatants, and merit an international response. Yet, he told the audience, the argument over atrocity crimes goes far beyond definition, and into the arena of prosecution.

Scheffer made note of “the ever-evolving theory about the reaches of international law.” Currently a topic of intense debate is the question of whether atrocious crimes such as those committed on Sept. 11 should, in the future, be tried in an international criminal court, particularly when the crime has an international impact.

An International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently in the works and, according to Scheffer, will come into force in the next couple of months. Washington has rejected the ICC, however, on the grounds that it will become a political tool used against the U.S. Scheffer disagreed with this outright rejection, claiming that rather than dismiss the ICC the U.S. should engage it, so as to participate in the development of atrocity law rather than rebuff it as inapplicable to the United States. For example, he said, the U.S. should suggest that the ICC “limit the right to lodge complaints to governments.” While this does not eliminate the possibility of political vendettas, said Scheffer, it will surely lessen them.

Scheffer suggested that perhaps America is not as innocent as it claims. The U.S. “needs to rethink how it conducts war so law is not inhibiting,” he said, as well as rethink how it weighs military versus collateral damage to civilians and property. The military advantage must not simply outweigh collateral damage, Scheffer argued, it must significantly outweigh collateral damage.

Scheffer insisted that the U.S. should distinguish between targets of military importance to the adversary and targets that have both military and civilian application, such as electricity grids and bridges. “The U.S. must become more sensitive to long-term civilian impact,” he said. And, he added, the U.S. must learn to better explain its errors and deal with the errors’ victims.

—Kristel Halter

The State of Israel v. Dr. Azmi Bishara

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine held a Jan. 4 luncheon briefing to discuss Dr. Azmi Bishara’s upcoming trial in Israel. Describing his case and its implications for Palestinian citizens of Israel were two of Bishara’s legal representatives, Dr. Hassan Jabareen, founder and director of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and his associate Riad Anes, an expert criminal defense lawyer.

In November 2001, the Israeli Knesset voted to lift the immunity of Bishara, a Palestinian Member of the Knesset (MK) and the founder and leader of the National Democratic Assembly party. This is the first time an MK has been stripped of his immunity for criticizing Israeli policies. The Sharon government is seeking criminal indictments against Bishara based on a political speech he made at a memorial service for President Hafez Al-Assad in Syria expressing support for the right to resist Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories as well as of southern Lebanon.

The second indictment concerns Dr. Bishara’s assistance in organizing humanitarian trips for Palestinian citizens of Israel to visit for the first time relatives in Syria they haven’t seen since 1948. Israeli citizens are not allowed to visit Syria, which Israel regards as an “enemy country.” At Bishara’s request, however, the government had granted 1,300 permits to allow the visits. But when Bishara declared that some of the applicants (who, the audience inferred, most probably were Israeli spies) did not meet the criteria and could not go on the tour, Israel revoked its permission.

This case represents the real status of Palestinians in Israel, Dr. Jabareen said, and how the government and the Knesset want Arabs to behave. Palestinians are not immigrants, he noted: “We are natives, with indigenous rights. We didn’t choose to be part of this state, the state came to us.”

The status of an indigenous population should not be changed drastically, Jabareen concluded.

—Delinda C. Hanley

Jordanian Activist Discusses Political Empowerment of Jordanian Women

Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies hosted a lecture by Abla Amawi on Feb. 15 to discuss challenges facing Jordanian women’s access to political participation.

Amawi, who currently works for the United Nations Development Program in Amman, examined patterns of political participation in Jordan. The extent of overall political participation by women has been limited, she noted, despite substantial financial support pouring in from the Jordanian National Commission for Women and from global donors interested in encouraging a greater role for women. This, however, she pointed out, is not specific to women. According to Amawi, democracy in Jordan is present in format, rather than in content. The new press law, for example, expands the freedom of speech and assembly but, she said, it places greater restrictions on other areas of basic political participation.

Amawi’s research examined whether or not recent attempts by Jordan’s government have indeed opened up the political system. She especially looked at how such attempts expanded or limited gender discrimination in politics. Amawi found that, despite some improvements, gender discrimination still exists in such critical areas as employment and legal status. Gender discrimination is also evident in insurance benefits and tax and labor laws, she added.

Despite the Jordanian constitution’s emphasis on gender equality, Amawi said, personal status laws remain favorable to men. The legal marriage age for women remains set at 15 years of age, despite efforts by activists to increase it. Also, she said, the Jordanian constitution still contains a special “honor crime” clause meting out very light prison sentences to men who kill their spouses or female relatives under the guise of protecting their families’ honor. Nonetheless, Amawi pointed out, the number of honor crimes in Jordan does not exceed 25 cases a year, which she viewed positively given the fact that Jordan’s population is over five million. Domestic abuse, she stated, is a far more prevalent problem and deserves more attention than honor killings.

Shifting her focus to factors affecting campaigning and elections, Amawi noted that tribal linkages remain very predominant in Jordan. The state, she said, has failed to supplant the tribe as the source of power and loyalty for Jordanians. Instead, allegiance remains strong to the tribe, she explained, because the tribe continues to provide services through patron-client relations and social networking. By contrast, Amawi stated, the institutionalization of Jordan’s bureaucratic system has failed miserably.

The country’s electoral system itself is not democratic, she continued, with the number of parliamentary seats allocated for each district not always proportionate to the nature of its constituency. Seats for certain minorities, for example, do not reflect their percentage of the population, she said, and districts traditionally loyal to the Jordanian regime are given more seats in parliament than less regime-friendly districts. The district of Karak for example, typically loyal to the regime, is allocated nine seats in Jordan’s parliament, Amawi noted, whereas the district of Amman, which has a large Palestinian constituency, is given merely three seats.

Depending on the constituency, she said, Jordanian voters used to be able to cast five votes per election. Thus, she explained, they could vote for their tribal representatives in addition to candidates running on ideological, financial, or social issues. However, Amawi said, when Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood won a majority in parliamentary elections, the government instituted a one-person, one-vote law. And, she told the audience, because tribal association is the most important influence on voters, each voter used his or her one vote to select a tribal representative. Not only did smaller tribes lose out, she noted, but women were disfavored because leadership positions in tribal structures are usually assigned to male figures.

One of the main challenges facing an open political system in Jordan, Amawi said, is eliminating the replication of tribal structures, visible even in Jordanian urban centers. She noted that 79 percent of Jordanians live within close proximity to their original homes and families, thus perpetuating traditional patterns of political activism.

Amawi pointed out that Jordanian women are not citizens in the real sense of the word. Everything, she said, is mediated through male figures. The family register book, a form of identification required to acquire a driving license, register to vote, or enlist children in schools, for example, is issued in the name of the father or husband, she said. Needless to say, she added, divorced or widowed women effectively have no linkages to the state. Also, Amawi said, Jordanian women married to non-Jordanian men have no right to claim citizenship or services for their children, since no family registry book can be issued to a non-Jordanian male head of a household.

The most formidable challenge to improving legal and social status for Jordanian women, said Amawi, emanates from Jordan’s young generation. The majority of Jordanians aged between 45 to 60 years old, she said, are quite supportive of expanding women’s rights. As a matter of fact, she pointed out, the religious establishment supported the repeal of honor killing clauses in the constitution. While the older Jordanian generation favors the idea of women working and running for public offices, she noted, the younger generation of men generally disapproves. Jordan, she explained, has failed to socialize its youth into supporting social change that is progressive to women.

According to Amawi, mind-sets concerning the role of women in Jordanian society must change in order for women to succeed in getting elected to public office. Most women running for public office in the latest elections had masters degrees, she said, and others held professional jobs with extensive grass root involvement in their respective communities. “They had done their homework,” Amawi observed, attending workshops on democracy, electioneering, campaigning—all funded by local and international institutions.

Another obstacle to women’s political participation, Amawi pointed out, is that women are financially disadvantaged. Candidates usually attract voters through lavish meals, services, and gifts, to which most Jordanian women had no access.

A practical remedy for the various challenges facing Jordanian women, Amawi argued, is changing socialization patterns in the Jordanian society. Among her recommendations were that women focus on small-scale work, running for public offices in municipal elections, for example.

Despite the various challenges faced by Jordanian women, however, issues of gender discrimination are discussed openly in Jordan, Amawi noted. Within the region, she said, Jordanian women have achieved remarkable success in education and other areas. Appointments to high-ranking government positions, she said, are increasingly accessible to women.

Asked about upcoming elections, Amawi predicted a low voter turnout, due to Jordanians’ general sense of helplessness as a result of the continuing violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Jordan’s current economic difficulties, she added, coupled with a noticeable deterioration in the standard of living have deepened the population’s disenchantment with politics in general.

—Asma Yousef