If you’ve ever wondered “how much money in has been paid out to atrocity victims worldwide” or “how many ICTR indictees are still at large” or “can the Special Tribunal for Lebanon conduct trials in absentia,” then this is the resource for you.

It’s also the resource for me, combining my love of brightly colored charts and international criminal law. For instance:

Seriously, go check it out.

This news comes courtesy of a spokesman for the country’s Civil Aviation Authority, explaining the aviation regulations in the aftermath of the arrest of a detective accused of “operating a toy helicopter equipped with a video camera.”

Local media seem unsure whether the prohibition was meant seriously, although one report points out that while Swazi witches are known to employ brooms to “fling potions,” they do not use them for transport.

In any event, witches: you have been warned.

Yesterday morning I went to observe the Rios Montt/Rodriguez Sanchez genocide trial. (Why, what do you do on your vacation?)

The highlights:

• Rios Montt’s entrance. He shuffled into the room, looked around, and then walked over to the prosecution table and shook hands with each lawyer, one by one, before waving and blowing them a kiss. It was so bizarre that I still can’t quite believe I saw it, but I’m reasonably certain that I did. I was too far away to hear their conversation, but Xeni Jardin was closer, and she said that it was “mostly small talk.”

• My successful achievement of a nearly 1/1 correlation between “hours spent on an airplane” to “minutes of trial observed.” After Judge Barrios called the hearing to order, she explained that Rios Montt’s attorney, Francisco Garcia Gudiel, had called her this morning to complain that he was suffering from “problemas de salud,” (health problems) and would therefore not be attending the hearing. Without him, it could not proceed. (The judge’s decision to temporarily eject Garcia Gudiel at the beginning of the trial has proven to be a problem for the tribunal. So, unsurprisingly, she seemed unwilling to take any risks, even though the lawyer’s sudden “illness” is highly suspect.) I think the whole thing took about six minutes, from “all rise” to the dismissal for the day.

• The dress code: jeans and linen for the human rights lawyers. Suits for prosecutors and defense lawyers, and a couple of nervous-looking students in the audience. (I wore my usual NYC work clothes, which led to me being mistaken for one of the aforementioned nervous students. Oh well.) Spectacular traditional dress for the Ixil women, but button-downs and slacks for the Ixil men. And one extremely snappy red skirt suit for Judge Barrios.

Well, good news.

The RFK Center has the auction item for you. It’s a 6 week internship with the NGO Committee on Human Rights. All you have to do is fork over five figures plus $9.95 shipping and handling. (Apparently they’re going to mail the internship to you? I don’t know.)

Bidding’s currently at $26,000.

His name is Omar Borkan Al Gala and according to his Facebook page, he is a photographer, actor, and poet.

You know, I don’t agree with the Saudi government about much, but it’s possible he is excessively handsome.

In case you’re wondering: Yes, it is a new TV show about, um, ICC cops (because that’s totally a thing), and yes, there will be a drinking game. See you this summer.

H/T to the incomparable Vanessa Parra.

But amidst the horror, some welcome absurdity from the Saudi government: Three Emirati men were forcibly removed from a festival in Riyadh this week, then deported, for the offense of being “too handsome.” Apparently, authorities feared that “female visitors could fall for them.” God forbid.

H/T: Paul in Lusaka, plus everyone else who passed this one along.

Once the invitation became public earlier this week, sponsors started dropping like flies. Now the invitation looks like this:

Still happening tonight, though.

Over at the Monkey Cage, IR O.G. Jim Fearon asks “How is the ICC supposed to work?”

Taking on the ecstatic reaction to Bosco Ntaganda’s unexpected surrender last month, Fearon wonders whether this is truly a “victory for justice.” He identifies two possible reasons we might actually see perverse effects whereby the operation of the ICC could actually lead to increased human rights violations. The first is the classic argument espoused by Team Peace in the Peace vs. Justice debate: If you’re an atrocity committing potential ICC indictee, the possibility of facing accountability provides a profound disincentive against laying down your arms.

The second is what Fearon refers to as a liability limiting mechanism. He suggests that, all else equal, your ICC-indicted atrocity committer is in a better position than your unindicted atrocity committer, because if things start to go south, the former always has the option of an all expenses paid trip to The Hague.

This is an interesting argument, and one whose implications are worth teasing out. There are a couple of ways that The-Hague-as-escape-route could result in an increase in violations. We can think of them as mirror images to “general” and “specific” deterrence claims. (Note: This is the distinction between deterring potential future offenders vs. deterring future offenses by the individual being punished.)

First, in an exact reversal of arguments about the ICC’s possible “general deterrent” effect, the existence of the ICC might encourage potential perpetrators who wouldn’t otherwise commit atrocities to do so. In order for this to follow, some class of potential perpetrator would have to be interested in committing atrocities, but deterred by the risk of being killed in retaliation. These potential perpetrators would also have to be aware of the ICC and reasonably able to predict what will attract its attention, such that they could commit atrocities in a manner well-targeted to producing protective ICC warrants. This may be logically plausible for some marginal cases, but it seems practically improbable for many of the same reasons that a strong general deterrent effect is unlikely: ICC intervention is never certain, and is heavily constrained by both resource and political considerations.

The more likely scenario, and the one that I think Fearon likely has in mind, is something I’ve worried about for a while. For those specific perpetrators who have already attracted the attention of the ICC, the issuance of a warrant may operate as a license to kill. Once you know that you have the escape route to The Hague in place, whatever restraint was provided by the risk of suffering politically (including, but not limited to, retaliatory killing) for your actions will vanish. This raises the possibility that rather than producing specific deterrence, the ICC could in fact be producing the opposite (specific anti-deterrence?).

I agree with Fearon that the prospects for the ICC to directly deter the commission of mass atrocities are dim. However, this does not mean that the ICC cannot contribute to reducing the occurrence of these crimes through other mechanisms. For more on this, check out two other responses to Fearon’s post: Erik Voeten’s, suggesting that the ICC may encourage domestic level enforcement that will ultimately have the capacity to deter, especially in “countries where ‘mid-level’ human rights abuses occur,” and Heger, Aloyo, & Dutton’s, discussing their findings that ICC membership is correlated with significantly less torture.

From the AP, the story of an adolescent girl being saved from rape and forced marriage by three Ethiopian lions:

“A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.

“They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,” Wondimu said.
“If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage,” he said.”

You heard it here first, folks. In the battle against sexual violence, lions are the new camcorders.

(H/T Melinda.)