United Nations Books - Page 6

Customary International Humanitarian Law

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Volume 2 contains a summary of the relevant treaty law, international case-law and relevant State practice including legislation, military manuals, case-law, official statements, and official military practice for each aspect of humanitarian law. (Available only as part of the boxed set; not sold individually)

The Law of the Sea: Official Text of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea With Annexes and Index Final Act of the Third United Nations Conference on the la

United Nations Convention on Law

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Global Bondage: The U.N. Plan to Rule the World

Cliff Kincaid

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Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos

Dore Gold

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The prevailing ideology of Isolationism 5 out of 5 stars.
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In 1990-1995, Liberia forced more than 800,000 people into exile. The UN did not exercise its influence and power stopping the injustice. The UN did not bring justice to the Khmer Rouge leaders. In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge murdered millions of Cambodians and the UN did not authorize a forceful stop to the murder. The UN was late in response to the 1994 Rwanda War. In 1998, five African countries invaded Congo and by 2001, 2.5 million people were killed and it was not until 2003 that the UN dispatched French forces to establish law and order, a year latter. The UN is letting special interests dictate policy and these economic and social incentives prevent action. The UN policies and actions are seemingly covert; the UN does not want an informed public. The UN is dysfunctional and this ineptiness increases the chance of crimes against humanity. The UN has no deterent capacity.

The UN is not a legal body operating to some objective legal criteria. The UN can maintain diplomatic neutralism in the face of genocidal murders and this is immoral. The UN is taking the side of evil not to fight against evil. The maximum too resist not evil seems to apply to the powerless because the powerless should not provoke greater anger and bring destruction upon them by acting. "The ability to confront evil means the willingness to act boldly and ruthlessly and without consensus". The UN cannot act without consensus and if it's members can reframe from voting then they in essence have prevented healthy action. The ability or refusal, to recognize evil and boldly confront evil is the UN's salient flaw.

The UN has had an unusual amount of authority within the Middle East. The UN affirms the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli occupation. The UN has not deterred the terrorist threat in the Middle East nor has the UN, the supposed protector of international peace and security and improved peace in the world. Instead the UN has gerrymandered itself to many totalitarian regimes giving them voice in shaping world affairs. The UN ideology is weak; the UN remains silent on the peoples right too a representative government; the UN ideology has caved from a position of morality too one of relative morality.

The UN did not create Israel. The UN did not owe its existence to a UN parition plan or UN resolution. The Arab leaque refused to accept the Jewish state.

The Arabs did not disguise their aggression towards Israel and made the following statement "this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and crusades." The Arabs represented a group of states against Israel. The UN declared for the first time they would react too the threat with armed intervention. The UN did not react and the failure to act would result in serious injury to the prestige of the UN. The UN called for an Arab cease fire even as the old city of David was falling; 57 synaguoges and academies were destroyed. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin took Kastel allowing 131 trucks carrying 500 tons of food passage into Jerusalem saving a population of 160,000 where 100,000 were at risk.

In 1967, Syrian pressed their claims to the Sea of Galilee, Israel's only source of fresh water, which the armistice had established was entirely within the territory of Israel. In Syria had a new defense treaty with Egypt and April of 1967, Syria escalated shelling of villages in northern Israel. The Israeli's responded to the unusually heavy Syrian artillery barrages by launching fighter aircraft and shot down six Syrian Sovet Mig fighters. Syrian infiltrations increased. IDF, General Yitzhak Rabin warned Syrians that continue provocations would lead to a firm Israeli response that would endanger the Syrian regime. Israel was deterring Syria from exploiting their topographical advantage on the Golan Heights to shell Israeli civilians. The Soviet Union exploited the situation to spread rumors about Israel's plans of expansion inflaming the Arab world. The Soviets warned Egypt that Israel was planning a major offensive against its Syrian military partner. Israel vociferously denied the charge. The UN did nothing to stop the escalation and confrontation crisis. The Egyptians prepared for war. May 18, 1967 President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt massed 80,000 soldiers and 550 tanks on Israel's southern border. Egypt was conveying aggressive intent and commanding the UN Emergency Force to withdraw its peacekeepers from along the border between Israel's Negev Desert and Egyptian Sinai. Egypt artillery gun overlooked the Straits of Tiran, a vital lane Israel depended on for access to the Red Sea and ultimately the Indian ocean. U Thant ordered the UNEF withdrawal and war emanating in the region. U Thant reported to the security council, "Relations between peoples on opposite sides of the line are such that if the United Nations buffer should be removed serious fighting would, quite likely, soon be resumed" Nasser announced he was closing the Straits of Tiran, thereby enacting a blockade against Israel shipping. It was an act of war. Nasser was a pan-Arab advocate intervening in the politics of Algeria, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen, where he dispatched a huge expeditionary army in 1962. In 1964, Nasser was known as the "Hero of the Soviet Union" and Soviet admirals were constantly visiting Egypt seeking naval and air bases to counter the US sixth fleet. The UN did not convene to discuss the Egypt-Syria crisis. The Soviet representative said, "The Soviet delegation deems it necessary to stress that it does not see sufficient grounds for hasty convening of the Security Council and for the artificially dramatic climate fostered by the representatives of some Western powers". It is obvious the Soviets wanted Egypt to act out and continue in his confrontational course. Superpowers can not go to war because of mutual assured destruction through the escalating possibility of nuclear weapons; however, superpowers manipulated local governments to engage in confrontations in localized theatres and establish dominance indirectly. Jordon's King Hussein placed his armed forces under Egypt. Two Egyptian commando battalions joined nine Jordanian brigades that were poised to strike Israel from the Jordanian-controlled west bank and 1/3 of the Iraqi army traversed Jordanian territory and was positioned to cross the Jordan River. The battle was intended to destroy Israel and they knew Israel could not absorb the first blow. June 5, two hundred Israeli aircraft destroy Egyptian air force on the ground. More than a 1,000 Israeli's were injuried during the Jordian assault, Israel held its fire until Jordanian troops crossed into Jerusalem. Syria, sent bomber to attack Israel's oil refineries in Haifa Bay and in response Israel destroyed 2/3 of the Syrian air force. Finally, Iraqi bombers attack Israel and prompted an Israel counterstrike. June 10, 1967, Israel had captured the Gaza strip and the Sinai Pennisula, destroying the Egyptian military that had threatened a mass invasion and Israeli forces had captured the West bank and dismantled Jordanian military. They had recovered the old city of Jerusalem. And finally Israel had taken the Golan Heights from Syria. The UN involvement in the conflict had been a dismal failure. The Israeli army had defeated Soviet arms on the battlefield. It was not up to America diplomacy to decisively beat back Soviet initiative at the UN.

The tower of Babel was a futile attempt to unify all people subject by one government. The massive pyramid of money, technology, lust, and greed compelled the people to build upward. Time was their enemy because resources were not unlimited. It was only a matter of time before the tower had too be abandoned as a futile effort. The UN does not have the capability too maintain or create World peace.

God punished the people for their vanity. The people of the tower of Babel fell into confusion and their languages were changed. Individual tribes and small communities emerged with each tribe establishing customary laws and cultures. The idea of one single unifying power was destroyed. The UN will also fall upside and great will be its fall. Hopefully the "deep rooted" ideology of isolationism will compel the US too abandon the United Nations and remove its entanglement in the affairs of other nations. Peace will prevail as nations stop entangling themselves into the economic, social, and moral administration and politics of other countries.

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A United Nations insider exposes the ugly truth about the UN—including how UN organizations have been funding terrorist groups!

In the New York Times bestseller Tower of Babble, former United Nations ambassador Dore Gold blows the lid off the UN’s shocking failures to keep international peace, its corruption, its rampant anti-Americanism, and its emboldening of terrorist organizations. Citing previously unpublished documents, a brand-new chapter exclusive to this paperback edition provides the untold story of the infamous oil-for-food scandal—including the real scandal, that the UN let oil-for-food money go to fund terrorist organizations.

International Humanitarian Law: Prospects (International Humanitarian Law) (International Humanitarian Law)

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Good contemporary Overview 5 out of 5 stars.
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International Humanitarian Law: Prospects, 3rd Edition, fully revised and updated edition edited by John Carey, William V. Dunlap, R. John Pritchard (International Humanitarian Law: Transnational Publishers) Excerpt: When the contributors gathered in Vienna in 1998 for the workshops that were eventually to grow into this series of volumes on the origins, challenges, and prospects of international humanitarian law, the horrendous and world-changing events of September 11, 2001, were nearly as far in the future as they are now in the past as the third and final volume goes to press.
Since that day, millions of people who had never heard of-- or at least thought much about -international humanitarian law have been bombarded daily with news and commentary that impressed its existence and importance on the public consciousness and conscience. For many, for the first time, the laws of war meant something more than "name, rank, and serial number," never a completely accu¬rate delimitation of the interrogation of prisoners of war, but close enough for pop¬ular consumption. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo soon supplanted Tamarkan ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"), Stalag Luft III ("The Great Escape"), Stalag 13 ("Hogan's Heroes"), and the eponymous Stalag 17 as the popular images associ¬ated with prisoners of war, and these real-life images--whether of the prisoners or of the guards--were grimmer than most had expected. In the popular, some¬times comedic, representations of POW camps, the guards (invariably German or Japanese) were the villains, and it came as a shock to the American national psy¬che that this could be so even when the guards were Americans.
The response of the American government was swift and predictable: It never happened. If it did happen, they were just a few isolated incidents. And anyway, they did not violate international law, because the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "terrorists." By now, we know that none of that was true. The incidents are well documented and numerous, and President Bush himself has announced that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees in what he proclaimed as "the war on terror," now "the long war." The apparent change in direction is due in large part to the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Harridan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. , 126 S.Ct. 2749 (2006), which not only reinforces the role of the Congress in determining United States policy but also makes clear that the Geneva Conventions do apply, to the surprise of few outside of the United States.
One can hope that the Hamdan case marks the end of a brief diversion from the history of progressive development that the law of armed conflict has been enjoying for the past century and more. It was a sharply divided Supreme Court that rebuked the President and his attempts to evade his constitutional limitations and the international obligations of the United States, but it was a rebuke nonethe¬less. It is not at all clear whether that diversion was fueled by a misreading of the end of the cold war and America's role as the "world's sole superpower," or by a exuberance at finally being in a position to put neoconservative ideas to work, or by a misguided notion of American exceptionalism, or just by a good old Texas-style I've-got-a-job-to-do-and-nothing's-gonna-stand-in-my-way attitude. Whatever prompted it, it now appears that the political appointees in the White House who have been dictating the legal analysis to the professional lawyers at the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and the State Department Legal Adviser's Office--instead of the other way round--may be getting the message. This vol¬ume, then, is coming out at a most propitious time.
It became clear soon after September 11, 2001, that the world would be look¬ing differently at international humanitarian law. What to do, then, with a vol¬ume--well under way--on the prospects of international humanitarian law. The regime of the Hague and Geneva Conventions was facing perhaps its gravest chal¬lenge ever, even while other developments--notably the creation of the Inter¬national Criminal Court--were carrying international humanitarian law in new directions. After much consideration, we decided that the new debates over Guantánamo, "enemy combatants," and the Geneva Conventions should not draw attention away from the broad range of issues addressed in this volume--the ICC, victims' rights, sanctions regimes, and ad hoc tribunals--and that it would be a disservice to sideline these discussions while reshaping the book around the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib phenomenon. So we retained our original structure, updated the contributions, and invited a particularly respected scholar to address the new central question raised by the United States' response--Do terrorists have rights under international humanitarian law?
Leslie C. Green, among the most distinguished commentators on the law of armed conflict, answers that question with a resounding "yes" in the opening chapter, "The Relevance of Humanitarian Law to Terrorism and Terrorists" (the only essay here to have been written entirely after the events of 2001). Professor Green, after reviewing the antiterrorist conventions, the UN principles on the treatment of prisoners, international human rights treaties, the Geneva Conventions, and judicial decisions in Canada, Britain, and the United States, reaffirms the universality of humanitarian law and its application to everyone, even terrorists. If "they" had treated "our" personnel as "we" have treated "theirs" at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, he reminds us, captured offenders would have been charged with war crimes and, on conviction, would have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment or condemned to death. Meanwhile, the Bush admin¬istration, as this volume goes to press, seems to be, gradually and grudgingly,coming around to this point of view while denying that the doctrine of command responsibility appears to lead directly to the Pentagon and the White House.
Nevertheless, in a British case that, like Hamdan, was decided too late for Professor Green to discuss, it would appear that the House of Lords has restricted the reach of international humanitarian law. The Lords held, in R. v. Jones, [2006] UKHL 16, that, in the absence of appropriate legislation by Parliament, the courts of the United Kingdom (and by extension the far-flung British Commonwealth) are powerless to recognize the authority of international law and that they lack capacity to rein in the actions of the Crown when any British Government--under cloak of the royal prerogative to wage war--commits crimes against peace or crimes against humanity. It is not open to the courts, said the Lords, even to con¬sider whether such crimes have been committed by a British Government. Thus while the power of any British Government to try enemy war criminals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or crimes against peace has been demonstrated in the distant and not-so-distant past, its power to hold British subjects to account may be highly restricted.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, a young Army lawyer asked the Nuremberg Tribunal to affirm, through law, the human right to live in peace and dignity. Nearly sixty years later, Benjamin B. Ferencz, who in the meantime has become one of the world's most passionate and eloquent spokesmen for inter¬national law and justice, repeats, this time to the world community, that same "Plea of Humanity to Law." Whether through ad hoc international criminal tri¬bunals, or the International Criminal Court, or the Security Council's enforcement powers--or all of the above--those who violate the international laws of human¬ity must answer for their deeds. The people of the world must send this message to their leaders--or pray that they themselves do not become the next victims.
"International criminal law in any true sense does not exist," wrote Georg Schwarzenberger (one of Leslie Green's law professors at University College, London, before the Second World War), midway through the twentieth century. At the opening of the twenty-first, the Statute of Rome went into effect, creating the world's first standing international criminal court. Even if Schwarzenberger was correct at the time, does the birth of the ICC mean that an international crim¬inal law in some true sense does now exist? What is the implication of the ICC for the concept of national sovereignty, for the state's monopoly on criminal juris¬diction, or the implication of sovereignty for the success of the ICC? In "The Creation of the International Criminal Court and State Sovereignty: 'The Problem of an International Criminal Law' Re-examined," Frederic Megret, one of Canada's outstanding international legal scholars and a former UNPROFOR "blue helmet" in Sarajevo, examines in extraordinary detail and depth these tensions and contradictions, wondering whether the ICC can ever become a defining force in global relations.
Wade Mansell of the University of Kent can muster but "Two Cheers for the International Criminal Court." He welcomes the creation of the ICC but with a caveat: One byproduct, not necessarily unintended, is a formal relegation to sec¬ond-class status of economic, social, and cultural rights, as opposed to the civil and political rights that the court will have jurisdiction to enforce. He sees this as one more step in the triumph of liberal rights over economic rights, which earlier was reflected in the decision to enforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by two separate international covenants and which has accelerated with the ascendancy of liberal capitalism over socialism. Why, he asks, should a fail¬ure to protect economic rights not be as much an offense as a violation of civil and political rights? Like any other international instrument, the Treaty of Rome was a product of realpolitik and idealism. As Mansell implies, there were limits to what influential countries were prepared even to consider.
In much the same way, compromises can be found in the Rome Statute's def¬initions of crimes, which define the ICC's jurisdiction. On the one hand, its def¬inition of genocide is virtually synonymous with that of the Genocide Convention and of a growing body of customary international law, but there the similarity ends. The ICC's jurisdiction over the other categories of offenses within the ICC's jurisdiction--crimes against humanity and war crimes--is severely limited by, for example, the use of such limiting words as "widespread" and "systematic," which do not appear in other international instruments and case law defining, refining, and even extending these offenses. This means, says Professor Jordan Paust, a leading scholar of international criminal law, in describing the restrictive nature of the "Crimes within the Limited Jurisdiction of the International Court," that primary competence and responsibility for prosecuting (or extraditing) those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity continues to lie with nation-states and the international ad hoc tribunals.
As this volume goes to press, it appears that a new mixed tribunal of Cambo¬dian and international prosecutors and judges will be convened after all, ending the long period of uncertainty about that which has lain across the conscience of mankind since the 1970s. It was hard enough to persuade the international com¬munity that, as a general proposition, a Cambodian war crimes tribunal was a good idea. Once it had finally been agreed that the Khmer Rouge would be held accountable for their atrocities in Cambodia, the debate had just begun. Under whose authority would a tribunal be established--the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Cambodian government, a "third" country" a Nuremberg-style coalition? The question of venue, too, was critical, for where a tribunal sits bears heavily on cost, political interference, witness protection, and the message that the trials would send to the survivors. Questions of temporal and personal jurisdiction--which crimes and which persons are to be prosecuted--may be influenced as much by raw politics as by notions of justice. In "Designing Justice for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge," Craig Etcheson, who helped found and then directed the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, examines these "practical issues" that will face the organizers of every future ad hoc tribunal.
In the spring of 1999, as NATO forces launched an intensive humanitarian intervention to suppress the ethnic cleansing and other large-scale violations of international humanitarian law in Kosovo, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia brought eleven actions in the International Court of Justice, asking the court to find that members of NATO had violated their obligations under the UN Charter. As it was undisputed that NATO forces were attacking Yugoslavia, what was the legal justification? Given that the UN Security Council had not specifically authorized this particular intervention, was this no more than regional vigilante justice? The ICJ has since dismissed all the cases on jurisdictional grounds, so the question remains judicially unresolved. One possible answer lies with the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In "NATO's Attack on Yugoslavia: The Deputation of an Ad Hoc International Constabulary," Paul Rutkus, lecturer of international criminal law at Carleton University, explores whether the Security Council could have delegated a measure of Chapter VII peacemaking authority to the ICTY, which in turn could have authorized NATO's member states to assist the Tribunal in protecting victims and witnesses, secur¬ing evidence and crime scenes, and detaining suspects and surrendering indictees for trial.
Economic sanctions, originally conceived as measures of international col¬lective coercion short of military force and as mechanisms for enhancing the role of the less-powerful but peaceable states, have proved to be highly controversial. They have been denounced as genocide and as institutionalized racism, and, says Paul Conlon, the United Nations in recent years has spent as much effort miti¬gating the effects of its own economic sanctions as it has enforcing them. Dr. Conlon, a former official of the United Nations Centre against Apartheid and of the Security Council's Iraq Sanctions Committee, suggests that sanctions as they have been applied violate the principles and goals of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, concerning civilian populations. Sanctions, he suggests, should be administered with humanitarian considerations and general legal principles in mind. Proportionality, for example, dominates every legal discussion of military reprisal but seldom enters into the evaluation of sanctions--either their enforcement or humanitarian measures to mitigate their effects. With well over half a million deaths in Iraq caused by U.S.-led UN sanc¬tions between 1991 and 2003, it is easy to argue that proportionality must rein in what can be permitted in the name of international law or international politics. Dr. Conlon proposes not only adapting sanctions regimes to humanitarian law but also "Adapting Traditional Humanitarian Law to Sanctions."
Until the mid-twentieth century (and in some countries, such as Japan, even to this day) individuals were generally regarded exclusively as objects, rather than subjects, of international law, enjoying no personal rights and holding no obliga¬tions. Perpetrators of war crimes, in the broad sense, have marked a sharp excep¬tion to the rule, as they (sometimes) can be brought to personal justice under the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg principles. Avril McDonald suggests that the perpetrators' victims, too, are now beginning to find recognition in the international criminal justice system. Though the statutes of the ad hoc tribunals made little or no effort to accommodate the interests of the Yugoslav and Rwandan vic¬tims of those atrocities, the Statute of the ICC has integrated victims into the process by requiring their interests to be considered at every stage--by the pros¬ecutor, the Pre-Trial Chamber, the Trial Chamber, and the Appeals Chamber. Significantly, victims may make submissions directly to the court. In "The Devel¬opment of a Victim-Centered Approach to International Criminal Justice for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law," Dr. McDonald, an IHL scholar at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut and editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, suggests that this is a good start but that a great deal more remains to be done, especially regarding reparations.
As the volume ends, so does the series--as it began--with R. John Pritchard examining British war crimes trials in the aftermath of past wars, in the hope that these experiences might offer some insight into the implications of how such tri¬als may be conducted today or in the future. In "The Parameters of Justice: The Evolution of British Military and Civil Perspectives on War Crimes Trials and Their Legal Context," Dr. Pritchard, one of the most prolific and distinguished historians of war crimes trials, concludes that concerns about fairness to perpe¬trators gave way to political expedience and haste in the disposition of clemency, displacing concern for victims and justice and ultimately poisoning Britain's rela¬tionship with Germany, Italy, and especially Japan after the Second World War. As we face the winding down of the International Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and other ad hoc tribunals, who is going to govern the administration of clemency and parole when the judges are no longer there? Will the prisoners be in the hands of some other legal authority, or will these important questions of justice fall to politicians?
* * *
In the meantime, the scope and concerns of international humanitarian law continue to grow. The Bush administration may, paradoxically, have strengthened the IHL regime through its efforts to disregard the Geneva Conventions. Public disgust at efforts to deny or condone torture and inhumane treatment, combined with a pragmatic recognition that U.S. soldiers taken prisoner elsewhere in the world could be on the receiving end of such treatment, reinforced in the public mind the need for binding international rules of war. Indeed, it was military lawyers who led the opposition, within government and without, against the administration's efforts to undercut the Geneva Conventions.
Will the public support of the Geneva Conventions translate into similar sup¬port for the International Criminal Court? There is no logical reason that it must. The United States has long been legally bound by the Geneva Conventions, and the reciprocal benefits they provide are, or so one might have thought until recently, beyond questioning. The debate over the ICC, on the other hand, is whether tosign on to a new venture, and whether the benefits are worth the costs. The reci¬procity that is inherent in the Geneva regime does not, as Frédéric Mégret observes, become a factor in the ICC regime unless the United States chooses to join, which is the very issue being debated. Nevertheless, the experience with the Geneva Conventions may have awakened the American public to the importance of international cooperation and the difficulty, even futility, of trying to go it alone, "sole superpower" or not.
Through all this, the scope of international humanitarian law continues to grow. War-crimes victims caught in the seemingly faceless and unfeeling justice system, and innocent civilians trapped in the squeeze of the sanctions regime, have caught the attention of the IHL theorist. Women suffer disproportionately in war--particularly in modern social conflict, where the battlefields are not well defined--and have found little justice in the legal system for the sexual violence systematically directed at them. Kelly Askin, in Volume II--Challenges--looks at the jurisprudence of the Rwandan and Yugoslav ad hoc tribunals and finds cause for hope.
Therein lies the importance of books like these and the essays they comprise. Grand projects have grown out of a single writing. Henri Dunant's Souvenir de Solferino was the conception of the modern law of armed conflict, as we used to call international humanitarian law, and the Genocide Convention was adopted in 1948 and entered into force in 1951, just a few years after Rafael Lemkin coined the word in 1944 in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In fields that are, like law, by nature practical, theory often develops a bad name, especially when the practi¬tioners or the victims cannot see that the theory describes a real problem and, sometimes at least, offers a real-world solution. These essays are rooted in real¬ity and may even change that reality for the better.

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In three distinct volumes the editors bring together a distinguished group of contributors whose essays chart the history, practice, and future of international humanitarian law. At a time when the war crimes of recent decades are being examined in the International Criminal Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and a new International Criminal Court is being created as a permanent venue to try such crimes, the role of international humanitarian law is seminal to the functioning of such attempts to establish a just world order. The intent of these volumes is to help to inform where humanitarian law had its origins, how it has been shaped by world events, and why it can be employed to serve the future. The other volumes in this set are "International Humanitarian Law: Origins" and "International Humanitarian Law: Challenges".

War Crimes Against Women:Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals

Kelly Askin

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This book examines laws and customs of war prohibiting rape crimes dating back thousands of years, even though gender-specific crimes, particularly sex crimes, have been prevalent in wartime for centuries. It surveys the historical treatment of women in wartime, and argues that all the various forms of gender-specific crimes must be prosecuted and punished. It reviews the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals from a gendered perspective, and discusses how crimes against women could have been prosecuted in these tribunals and suggests explanations as to why they were neglected. It addresses the status of women in domestic and international law during the past one hundred years, including the years preceding World War II and in the aftermath of this war, and in the years immediately preceding the Yugoslav conflict. The evolution of the status and participation of women in international human rights and international humanitarian law is analyzed, including the impact domestic law and practice has had on international law and practice. Finally, this book reviews gender-specific crimes in the Yugoslav conflict, and presents arguments as to how various gender-specific crimes (including rape, forced prostitution, forced impregnation, forced maternity, forced sterilization, genocidal rape, and sexual mutilation) can be, and why they must be, prosecuted under Articles 2--5 of the Yugoslav Statute (i.e., as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, torture, violations of the laws of war, violations of the customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity). The author, a human rights attorney, academic, and activist, spent three years researching both the treatment of women during periods of armed conflict and humanitarian laws protecting women from war crimes.

The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority

Bruce Cronin, Ian Hurd

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This book observes how the growth of the political authority of the Council challenges the basic idea that states have legal autonomy over their domestic affairs. The individual essays survey the implications that flow from these developments in the crucial policy areas of: terrorism; economic sanctions; the prosecution of war crimes; human rights; humanitarian intervention; and, the use of force. In each of these areas, the evidence shows a complex and fluid relation between state sovereignty, the power of the United Nations, and the politics of international legitimation. Demonstrating how world politics has come to accommodate the contradictory institutions of international authority and international anarchy, this book makes an important contribution to how we understand and study international organizations and international law. Written by leading experts in the field, this volume will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations, international law and global governance.

After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council

Ian Hurd

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Editorial Review:

The politics of legitimacy is central to international relations. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations. The Council's authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states.

Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council's legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate.

This book's innovative approach to international organizations and international relations theory lends new insight into interactions between sovereign states and the United Nations, and between legitimacy and the exercise of power in international relations.

After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council

Ian Hurd

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Editorial Review:

The politics of legitimacy is central to international relations. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations. The Council's authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states.

Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council's legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate.

This book's innovative approach to international organizations and international relations theory lends new insight into interactions between sovereign states and the United Nations, and between legitimacy and the exercise of power in international relations.