Jeune Street

Guest blog by a friend who worked on the first International Criminal Court trial

Glencoe, Scotland

Half a century after Nuremberg and Tokyo, the world’s first permanent criminal court, designed to adjudge the crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, has begun its first trial.

It is a trial that, appropriately for an experiment in global justice and governance, has been beset with difficulties.  The prosecution improperly withheld exculpatory information from the defence. The defence has been beset with personnel changes and claims an inability to get its feet sufficiently on the ground in Ituri, the region where Thomas Lubanga is alleged to have recruited and used children as soldiers (the term ‘child soldiers’ is too glib and should be consigned to the dustbin of euphemisms along with ‘ethnic cleansing’).  All of this in the context of ongoing instability in the Congo and allegations of all sorts of personal impropriety against the Prosecutor himself.  In the first few days of testimony the first star child witness for the prosecution, after being warned that his evidence may be used against him in future trials and facing down the glare of the defendant, turned tail and denied having ever been a soldier at all.

If ever there has been an example of the half-light talked about in the Baha’i writings, the transition to a New World Order, this is it.  But there is a light there glowing, a bench that really is committed to finding the truth of what passed in Ituri and of holding to task those responsible.

The Baha’i Writings tell us that peace and justice must go hand in hand. As the world takes this faltering step towards a greater justice, all of us who work for peace should draw a little courage, a little hope.