Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of several Brazilian cities for a second night of largely peaceful protests over poor public services, high prices and corruption.
In Sao Paulo an estimated 50,000 people participated in Tuesday's demonstration lasting hours and concentrated along Avenida Paulista in the centre of the city of 11 million, police said.
Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane reports.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Iran: 'Principles of Iran foreign policy unchangeable'
Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said here Tuesday that principles of Iranˈs foreign policy are unchangeable.
Talking to reporters at his weekly news conference, Abbas Araqchi said the main criterion of Iranˈs foreign policy is to preserve the right of the Iranian nation.
Asked if some changes would appear in Iranˈs foreign policy during the new presidentˈs tenure, he said the Monday press conference held by president-elect Hassan Rohani made many issues clear.
Rohani held first news conference after his victory in the June 14 presidential election attended by foreign and domestic reporters on Monday.
The Islamic Republicˈs foreign policy is based on maintaining and serving the values of the Islamic Revolution and the countryˈs national interest within the framework of guidelines of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Araqchi.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to its rules; however, each government follows its own tactics and methods which differ from one another, he noted.
Turkey: Protests Taking New Shape
Originally published by EurasiaNet.org
Turkey: Protests Taking New Shape
by Justin Vela EurasiaNet.org
Despite smothering government pressure, critics of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are finding new ways to make their voices heard.
Many say their goal now is to channel the energy of the Occupy Gezi protests into a wider opposition movement, with an aim of mounting opposition to Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in local elections in 2014 and parliamentary elections in 2015, but without joining arms with any existing political force. Or resorting to violence.
The protests, initially aimed at stopping a development project for Gezi Park, a lone strip of greenery in congested central Istanbul, quickly evolved into a national outpouring of grievances against Erdoğan’s heavy-handed governing style. Smaller protests broke out across the country, but limited local press coverage means verifying their size and scope remains difficult. Five people have been killed and thousands injured in the weeks of clashes between protesters and police.
The Istanbul protesters were finally forcibly removed from Gezi Park on June 15, though sporadic attempts to reenter the area still occur. In Ankara, heavy clashes between police and demonstrators continued throughout the night of June 17.
The violence has altered the protests’ imperative, some participants say. On June 18, there were only silent protests of residents standing still in various places of Istanbul and Ankara; some staring at a Turkish flag.
"In the perspective of the protesters, it should settle down in order to sustain itself because people are tired, physically and mentally," said Levent Ince, a 27-year-old protester in Ankara.
Instead of "physical resistance," the anti-government protesters could move into a stage of "informative resistance,” he asserted.
"If we can inform other people who were somewhat supporting us and watching us and have their full support maybe this could evolve into something else," Ince said.
A new platform called "Gezi to the Parliament” will aim to help establish independent parliamentarians, he continued. "It is an open platform that people can find representatives and vote and rank the representatives, and the highest ranking representatives [go] to the parliament as an independent MP," he said.
In Istanbul, 27-year-old Zeki, a protester who asked to be identified only by one name because he is worried the authorities might "ring my bell,” is now more focused on the local elections than retaking Gezi Park.
"It’s my concentration from now on. I am dreaming about a huge campaign that will explain what is going on now,” he said. The protests succeeded in making people from all walks of life more engaged in Turkish society, Zeki claimed, and the process should continue.
The only involvement of traditional opposition political parties – the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has backed the demonstrators – would perhaps be that they would not run a candidate, he added. Other protesters are similarly adamant about maintaining a distance from these groups.
Yet, at the same time, with no formal organization to coordinate their plans, protesters recognize that their capability for political opposition to the AKP is limited. "We don't have anything to replace the government," Ince said. "We can't do anything with Erdoğan or without."
Though scattered, such young, relatively affluent and educated protesters could prove a source of trouble for the government, some local commentators believe. “My gut says they will recede with ever-increasing resentment in order to repeat any time anywhere, in any way,” said noted Turkish political commentator Cengiz Candar about the protests.
One contribution to any such process could be what Ince and Zeki describe as the loss of many protesters’ fear of the state. Said Ince: “I don't mind the gas anymore."
The Turkish government has sought to legitimize the violent response of police to the Gezi Park protest and authorities’ subsequent actions by claiming that the protesters were themselves dangerous. On June 16, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, the governor of Istanbul, claimed that protesters used lethal weapons and two members of the state security forces were injured.
On June 17, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinç warned that the army, as well as more heavily armed police forces, could be brought in to quell further unrest.
Hundreds were detained over the weekend, with many of those arrested, according to Amnesty International. “Our concern was that people had been held in irregular places of detention, basically outside police stations … for a number of hours without having access to lawyers,” said Andrew Gardner, a Turkey researcher for Amnesty International. Gardner added that the whereabouts of some of the detained people are still not clear.
Those measures continued in Istanbul on June 18, with the detention of 193 individuals, including members of the outlawed Marxist-Leninist Communist Party; 22 are accused of having organized “violent protests” and urging others to join “illegal demonstrations,” news outlets reported. Raids were also carried out at two media outlets, Atılım Newspaper and Etkin News Agency, The Hürriyet Daily News reported.
Raids also took place in Ankara, but specifics were not available.
Zeki admitted some people enjoyed the conflict with the police, but said he never saw a gun at the protests. While protesters were at times angry and had to defend themselves, including throwing back tear-gas canisters at police, the strongest show of resistance the majority showed was to man barricades around Taksim, he claimed.
Like other protesters, he denied knowledge of the people seen throwing Molotov cocktails at police in Istanbul on June 11. The government has rejected categorically protester allegations that the individuals were police provocateurs.
Erdoğan on June 18 praised security forces for showing restraint while sweeping protesters from Gezi Park and Taksim Square, adding that police officers enjoyed a natural right to use pepper spray. "Our police have taken a democratic stance against systematic violence and have successfully passed the test of democracy,” Today's Zaman quoted Erdoğan as saying.
Editor's note: Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.
Turkey: Protests Taking New Shape
by Justin Vela EurasiaNet.org
Despite smothering government pressure, critics of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are finding new ways to make their voices heard.
Many say their goal now is to channel the energy of the Occupy Gezi protests into a wider opposition movement, with an aim of mounting opposition to Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in local elections in 2014 and parliamentary elections in 2015, but without joining arms with any existing political force. Or resorting to violence.
The protests, initially aimed at stopping a development project for Gezi Park, a lone strip of greenery in congested central Istanbul, quickly evolved into a national outpouring of grievances against Erdoğan’s heavy-handed governing style. Smaller protests broke out across the country, but limited local press coverage means verifying their size and scope remains difficult. Five people have been killed and thousands injured in the weeks of clashes between protesters and police.
The Istanbul protesters were finally forcibly removed from Gezi Park on June 15, though sporadic attempts to reenter the area still occur. In Ankara, heavy clashes between police and demonstrators continued throughout the night of June 17.
The violence has altered the protests’ imperative, some participants say. On June 18, there were only silent protests of residents standing still in various places of Istanbul and Ankara; some staring at a Turkish flag.
"In the perspective of the protesters, it should settle down in order to sustain itself because people are tired, physically and mentally," said Levent Ince, a 27-year-old protester in Ankara.
Instead of "physical resistance," the anti-government protesters could move into a stage of "informative resistance,” he asserted.
"If we can inform other people who were somewhat supporting us and watching us and have their full support maybe this could evolve into something else," Ince said.
A new platform called "Gezi to the Parliament” will aim to help establish independent parliamentarians, he continued. "It is an open platform that people can find representatives and vote and rank the representatives, and the highest ranking representatives [go] to the parliament as an independent MP," he said.
In Istanbul, 27-year-old Zeki, a protester who asked to be identified only by one name because he is worried the authorities might "ring my bell,” is now more focused on the local elections than retaking Gezi Park.
"It’s my concentration from now on. I am dreaming about a huge campaign that will explain what is going on now,” he said. The protests succeeded in making people from all walks of life more engaged in Turkish society, Zeki claimed, and the process should continue.
The only involvement of traditional opposition political parties – the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has backed the demonstrators – would perhaps be that they would not run a candidate, he added. Other protesters are similarly adamant about maintaining a distance from these groups.
Yet, at the same time, with no formal organization to coordinate their plans, protesters recognize that their capability for political opposition to the AKP is limited. "We don't have anything to replace the government," Ince said. "We can't do anything with Erdoğan or without."
Though scattered, such young, relatively affluent and educated protesters could prove a source of trouble for the government, some local commentators believe. “My gut says they will recede with ever-increasing resentment in order to repeat any time anywhere, in any way,” said noted Turkish political commentator Cengiz Candar about the protests.
One contribution to any such process could be what Ince and Zeki describe as the loss of many protesters’ fear of the state. Said Ince: “I don't mind the gas anymore."
The Turkish government has sought to legitimize the violent response of police to the Gezi Park protest and authorities’ subsequent actions by claiming that the protesters were themselves dangerous. On June 16, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, the governor of Istanbul, claimed that protesters used lethal weapons and two members of the state security forces were injured.
On June 17, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinç warned that the army, as well as more heavily armed police forces, could be brought in to quell further unrest.
Hundreds were detained over the weekend, with many of those arrested, according to Amnesty International. “Our concern was that people had been held in irregular places of detention, basically outside police stations … for a number of hours without having access to lawyers,” said Andrew Gardner, a Turkey researcher for Amnesty International. Gardner added that the whereabouts of some of the detained people are still not clear.
Those measures continued in Istanbul on June 18, with the detention of 193 individuals, including members of the outlawed Marxist-Leninist Communist Party; 22 are accused of having organized “violent protests” and urging others to join “illegal demonstrations,” news outlets reported. Raids were also carried out at two media outlets, Atılım Newspaper and Etkin News Agency, The Hürriyet Daily News reported.
Raids also took place in Ankara, but specifics were not available.
Zeki admitted some people enjoyed the conflict with the police, but said he never saw a gun at the protests. While protesters were at times angry and had to defend themselves, including throwing back tear-gas canisters at police, the strongest show of resistance the majority showed was to man barricades around Taksim, he claimed.
Like other protesters, he denied knowledge of the people seen throwing Molotov cocktails at police in Istanbul on June 11. The government has rejected categorically protester allegations that the individuals were police provocateurs.
Erdoğan on June 18 praised security forces for showing restraint while sweeping protesters from Gezi Park and Taksim Square, adding that police officers enjoyed a natural right to use pepper spray. "Our police have taken a democratic stance against systematic violence and have successfully passed the test of democracy,” Today's Zaman quoted Erdoğan as saying.
Editor's note: Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.
Egypt-Ethiopia: Heat over the Nile
Heat over the Nile
The temperature over the Nile issue shot up to the highest point recorded in recent history. It may not have reached crisis level yet, but the tension between Egypt and Ethiopia has reached a point where a cool-headed diplomatic engagement will be required to prevent it from further escalation.
Two years ago Ethiopia began the construction of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and it is reported that more than 20% of the project has now been completed. On 28 May, Ethiopia announced that it had successfully undertaken the diversion of the Blue Nile, a major tributary of the Nile River, in order to continue construction on the river bed. In Egypt there was already a great deal of concern – even paranoia – over the possible impact of the dam on its water security. It is no surprise, given the widely held myths and views in Egypt about the Nile, that the diversion of the Blue Nile has triggered extreme reactions.
Prompted by the public outcry, the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, held a consultative meeting with the country’s political elite. The discussions in President Morsi's office were televised. The whole world now knows what was said in that meeting and this has created a diplomatic and political disaster. Shockingly, proposals made in the meeting included threats that force would be used against Ethiopia, meddling in Ethiopia’s politics, sabotaging the GERD, arming opposition groups and supporting Ethiopia’s opponents.
In so doing, Egypt has shot itself in the foot. According to the Egyptian news website Ahram Online, the meeting ‘was full of what some Cairo-based African diplomats described as a condescending Egyptian reflection on Africa’. Ahram Online also stated that ‘diplomatic and intelligence sources … share “grave concerns” over some of the “unbelievable and outright ridiculous statements” that were made during the controversial meeting’. An unnamed senior Egyptian government official acknowledged the great political and legal harm that has been caused: ‘Up until that meeting we were in a very strong position as a country that suffers from serious water poverty and … faced with a unilateral decision of an upstream state to further cut [our] legally stipulated share of water; today we are … openly masterminding political unrest and maybe even a military offensive against neighbouring states; this could have some serious legal and political ramifications’.
The Nile issue is a major rallying point in Egypt and constitutes a major national security concern. An opposition politician said that ‘this goes beyond our internal political disagreements to a very serious national interest matter’. Although Egypt’s position has weakened, the desire and need to take measures to protect what it considers to be its long-standing ‘national interest’ on the Nile are unlikely to be abandoned. Indeed, on 10 June, President Morsi stated that ‘all options are open’ and that ‘if it [the Nile] diminishes by one drop then our blood is the alternative’.
Such a threat of war is prohibited under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and Article 4(f) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union and thus lacks any support under international law.
The kind of measures that Egypt chooses to adopt will influence whether the rising tension reaches a crisis point or dissipates. Although the racially charged views and the threatening posture of Egypt may deprive Egypt of support from Africa and major global powers, it is possible that the expressed views of the political elite may not change. Moreover, some of the approaches that were suggested in the meeting may even have enough support to be considered in the formulation of the courses of action that Egypt may eventually consider. And it is important to recognize that Ethiopia is vulnerable. Apart from the existence of armed opposition groups, which can easily be propped up, Ethiopia is unlike most other countries in terms of vulnerability to regional crisis because of its geo-strategic location. It is the only country that shares borders with six of the seven states of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Uganda is the exception). Ethiopia is therefore closely affected by the conflicts in the region, such as the one in Somalia. Consequently, an Egyptian military team’s visit to Mogadishu soon after the controversial televised meeting may be pure coincidence, but is likely to be received with concern in Addis Ababa. The Horn of Africa is also a region with a history of proxy wars and a tendency for the region’s states to support one another’s oppositions and armed groups. Ethiopia’s location makes it particularly vulnerable to such tensions, illustrated by the unresolved conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
What measures can be adopted to bring the temperature down in Nile relations? An aggressive process of constructive engagement is needed. The starting point should be to end threatening rhetoric. Significantly, both countries need to adopt a number of confidence building measures.
On the one hand, while rejecting the threats of war, the Ethiopian government needs to show an understanding of Egypt’s sensitivities. There is understandable anxiety and paranoia among the Egyptian public. Taking cognizance of this as well as the ongoing political changes in Egypt and the entire region, it is important for Ethiopia to engage with and reassure Egypt. It would be necessary to more effectively publicise the ways in which the GERD project will benefit the entire region and can be implemented in a way that limits its impact on the level of water flow. It is critical to tap into opinion makers in Egypt who understand the mutual benefits of the project. Although it is necessary for Ethiopia to closely monitor the measures that Egypt may adopt and their possible implications, an effort should also be made to involve all the Nile’s riparian states whose role should be brought to bear on attempts to cool the heat down. Sudan is strategically placed to play a particularly crucial role.
For its part, Egypt’s political leaders should avoid political rhetoric that propagates non-peaceful methods including the threat of use of force, proxy war or sabotage. And Egypt has the right to insist that the two countries cooperate to ensure that the impact of the GERD on the flow of the Nile is minimised. In addition, as Egyptian commentator Mahmoud Salem points out in a sobering article, it would be worthwhile exploring how the GERD may be harnessed for Egypt’s benefit. Examples include reducing loss of water through evaporation and accessing the hydroelectric power that the dam would eventually generate.
If these steps are not taken, there is a serious risk that the hostility will escalate into unnecessary regional crisis. Hopefully there is enough wisdom and leadership to end the tension and even use it for achieving a mutually beneficial cooperative settlement for the peoples and countries of the region.
Solomon Ayele Dersso, Senior Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, ISS Addis Ababa
Related article: Egypt Fears Diversion of Nile Waters for a New Dam
ICC: Funders Seek Greater Efficiency
This article originally appeared in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net
ICC's Funders Seek Greater Efficiency
As the court asks for a bigger budget, it will need to consider where cost savings can be made.
By Blake Evans-Pritchard, Simon Jennings - International Justice - ICC
ACR Issue 352,
The gleaming new front desk which greets visitors as they enter the International Criminal Court’s, ICC, Hague-based headquarters does not exactly scream austerity.
Renovating the entrance lobby, which is jointly shared with Eurojust, a judicial agency of the European Union, cost 50,000 euro, 66,000 US dollars, according to diplomatic sources.
Given that the ICC is due to move to new premises within the next couple of years, such apparently lavish spending rankles with the governments that pay for it, particularly at a time when they are cutting expenditure at home.
The 25,000 euro spent on the lobby – Eurojust paid the other half – is of course just a tiny fraction of the court’s overall budget, set at 109 million euro, 145 million dollars, for 2013. Court insiders say that the new lobby has improved security and saves energy through better insulation, thus reducing costs.
For officials in many of the contributing states, however, this kind of expenditure is symptomatic of the way the court operates, and is one of the reasons why they are reluctant to give it the money it badly needs.
Questions have been raised about a wide range of ICC expenditure, from travel costs to current management structures, and the contributing countries want action.
“We believe there is a need for the ICC to challenge itself more on its needs and required budget so that it can ensure that its operations are as effective and efficient as possible,” a spokesperson for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office told IWPR. “It isn’t possible to put a price on justice, but there are areas where we need more information from the court as to how certain budget lines are spent and how they contribute to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the court.”
Other governments that are major contributors to the ICC budget hold similar views, although officials were not willing to be quoted on the record.
DOUBTS ABOUT FINANCIAL PRUDENCE
The ICC’s budget is set by the Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute or ASP, made up of the governments which signed up to the court’s founding charter. In recent years, the ASP has been criticised for adopting a zero-growth policy for funding the court, even though the geographical scope of investigations has greatly expanded.
Many ASP members question whether the court is getting the most out of its current budget. The thinking is that if the ICC cannot be trusted to make every penny count, then it should not be entitled to more money.
Some have voiced concerns, for example, over the amount being spent to furnish the ICC’s new headquarters, which it is due to move into in 2015. New desks in the building reportedly cost 6,000 euro each.
According to the FCO, the British government has asked the court to provide more information about why certain costs are so high, with a view to “challeng[ing] their assumptions in order to reduce costs”.
"These areas include things like the cost of office equipment, travel and provision of services,” the FCO spokesperson said. “We are asking [the court] to be creative and inventive in how it finds efficiencies, for example through procurement, and revising policies so as to reduce costs – [such as] how long computers are kept for – so that this money can be used in support of the court’s work in other areas.”
Herman von Hebel, who replaced Silvana Arbia as the court’s registrar in March, recognises these concerns and has promised to address them.
“It is all about developing trust,” he told IWPR. “What I would like to do is develop a transparent discussion with the ASP to show exactly what our needs are and what we can do with the money that we are being provided with. When we speak about efficiency, there’s always room for critically assessing one’s own working methods.”
Von Hebel says that one of his priorities will be to look at the registry – the body in charge of administrative and financial management at the ICC – and to explore ways of doing more for less money.
“We need to be very specific about exactly what our needs are,” he said. “I think that this is something that could be done not only within the registry, but on a court-wide basis.”
Von Hebel certainly has the credentials for tackling budgetary constraints, and member states seem to have faith that he will make a difference.
He spent three years as deputy registrar and then registrar at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown, followed by a similar period as deputy registrar and then registrar at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in The Hague.
Both of those courts rely heavily on short-term voluntary funding, which often places tremendous pressure on their budgets.
“In these other tribunals, I led forthright internal discussions about our needs and resources, and was often perceived as tough in terms of the budget,” Von Hebel said. “Perhaps this is my Dutch nationality, but I hope that this is a reputation I will also have with the Assembly [of States Parties].”
PRESSING NEED FOR MORE FUNDS
There has never been greater urgency for the ICC to show that it is a responsible organisation that can be entrusted with more funding.
The court has come in for serious criticism in recent months following a string of failed investigations that have left prosecutors unable to bring enough evidence against suspects. (See ICC Under Fire Over Investigations .)
Supporters of the court say the Office of the Prosecutor is overstretched and needs more funding to enable it to conduct investigations to the necessary standard.
Four years ago, the ICC was investigating just four situations, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Darfur and the Central African Republic. Since then, it has added four more investigations, in Kenya, Libya, Mali, and the Ivory Coast.
At the same time, the court’s budget has barely increased at all, inching up from 101 million euro in 2009 to this year’s 109 million.
“We see that there’s a real problem with the number of investigations increasing whilst the number of investigation teams remain the same,” Jonathan O’Donohue, legal adviser at the advocacy organisation Amnesty International, said. “Staff often have to be moved around in order to cover the increased workload. The ultimate goal must be for the court to function effectively, but this is constantly overshadowed by the zero-growth argument.”
Von Hebel recognises that certain areas of the court are in desperate need of more funding, and he hopes that by making savings elsewhere he can persuade member states to increase the overall allocation.
“The prosecutor is in dire need of more resources to do investigations,” said Von Hebel. “Compared with other courts and tribunals, the number of staff per investigation is extremely low. If you have eight situations and just over 60 investigators, then you have a very tough job. We have discussed already with the prosecutor how we can internally streamline to further support this work. All member states have significant financial challenges at the moment, so we need to recognise this and create a culture of transparency, trust and confidence within our organisation.”
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
It is too early to tell whether the new registrar’s good intentions will make a meaningful difference to ICC expenditure, and there are few signs that member states are prepared to loosen their purse strings just yet.
This year’s negotiations on the budget are under way, and it is unlikely that anything more than a very slight increase will be agreed when member states meet in New York in November.
Still, diplomatic sources indicate that if the ICC is able to increase the ASP’s confidence in it by demonstrating a high level of transparency, subsequent years could see real steps towards addressing its funding needs.
"The court's willingness to respond to requests from the ASP on how it views and manages its budget has improved over the last few years,” the FCO spokesperson said. “We can see a growing partnership between the ASP and the court to develop and improve the overall efficiency of its operations.”
A source in another ASP member told IWPR, "The ICC has not always fostered a high level of trust with member states, which can make it difficult for the court to clearly show that it should be entitled to more funds. Things have improved noticeably since the low point of 2010, though, and we hope this continues.”
Von Hebel says that it is soon to say which areas can be subject to efficiency savings. Nevertheless, a draft report prepared by the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers offers some clues.
The document, seen by IWPR, was prepared at the request of the ASP’s Committee on Budget and Finance, which wanted an external assessment of the court’s organisational structure and a view on where savings might be made.
The report focuses primarily on changes to the registry and the judiciary. A separate report looking at the Office of the Prosecutor is being worked on at the moment.
“It can be concluded that the registry should seek to reduce its structural complexity with clear hierarchical and escalation lines, with a view to strengthening internal (and thereby external) cooperation and coordination,” the report states.
In his interview with IWPR, Von Hebel indicated that the registry’s managerial structure was an area he would be looking at.
The report also says that the registry suffers from a lack of adequate performance measurements, hampering efficient and targeted application of budget funds.
The report also recommended better communication among different ICC departments, suggesting that some of their functions may overlap.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants also tackled the issue of staffing, which, according to the latest figures from the court, eats up nearly 70 per cent of the budget.
Finally, the report notes a lack of staff motivation in some areas of the court, largely caused by a lack of career opportunities and general dissatisfaction with the performance appraisal system.
MEASURING JUSTICE
In national courts, it is quite common to use a series of benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of the justice process.
Pim Albers is a policy advisor within the Dutch ministry of justice and a senior researcher at the Hague Institute for Global Justice. He says it is normal practice, for example, to look at the duration of cases of a similar type and the ratio between incoming and completed cases.
However, it is not clear whether this would readily translate to the sphere of international justice, given the many variables that affect the success of any given investigation or prosecution.
“A court is not a factory that produces shoes,” Von Hebel said. “There are all sorts of factors that determine the effectiveness of the court. Whilst it may be useful to have a look at some quantitative factors such as the number of court hearings or the number of ongoing investigations, it’s also a question of what you can achieve on the ground, and it’s far too early in the court’s lifespan to make a complete assessment of this.”
Albers recognises that things work very differently at the ICC, and that there are huge challenges in comparing one trial or country situation with another. However, he thinks that some steps could be taken in this direction.
“It would be useful if the ICC could publish a breakdown of the time required by staff in order to reach a judgement,” he said. “It would be useful to measure how long it takes to prepare an indictment, how much time is spent on the investigation, how long the trial phase lasts. Then the court might be able to draw some useful conclusions about where cost savings would make most sense.”
Albers points out that such performance indicators might also reveal other valuable facts about the process of international justice, beyond merely where inefficiencies lie.
He suggests, for example, that it might be helpful to compare the number of indictments with the number of trials concluding, either in a conviction or an acquittal.
“A particularly high ratio... could indicate a high-level of cooperation with the situation country,” he said. “Conversely, a particularly low ratio may mean the level of cooperation is insufficient and steps should be taken. Performance indicators are useful at showing where the bottlenecks lie.”
Patrick Vinck, a research scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a centre within Harvard university, has been looking at ways in which indicators can be used to measure the effectiveness of outreach – the efforts made to communicate with people affected by the trial in the country concerned.
In the past, the court has been criticised for cutting its outreach programmes too quickly, since they are often viewed as a “non-core” function. This is something that Von Hebel wants to change.
“The key challenge is to decide what exactly you are trying to measure and what you are trying to do with outreach,” Vinck said. “If you are only trying to measure how much people have heard about the court or a particular trial, then things are fairly straightforward. But if you’re trying to capture true understanding of the trials, then measuring the impact becomes much more complex.”
Vinck says the methodology he uses is the same as might be used to measure the extent of a disease.
“We interview representative samples of the population and use this data to measure the prevalence of knowledge, attitudes and perceptions,” he said.
Whilst Vinck does not think it makes sense for benchmarks to be used to shape the budget, he nonetheless sees it as important to gather this kind of data, as a way of finding out whether ICC outreach work is effective, and whether more funding is needed. For example, past research into outreach activities in the Central African Republic, CAR, revealed that awareness of the ICC was especially low among women, even though gender-based violence forms a large component of the ongoing case against Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese politician accused of crimes in CAR.
“The budget for outreach in the ICC is ridiculously small,” said Vinck. “By evaluating their own work and effectiveness, outreach units can better demonstrate what their needs are.”
Blake Evans-Pritchard is an IWPR contributor in The Hague and Simon Jennings is IWPR’s Africa Editor in London.
ICC's Funders Seek Greater Efficiency
As the court asks for a bigger budget, it will need to consider where cost savings can be made.
By Blake Evans-Pritchard, Simon Jennings - International Justice - ICC
ACR Issue 352,
The gleaming new front desk which greets visitors as they enter the International Criminal Court’s, ICC, Hague-based headquarters does not exactly scream austerity.
Renovating the entrance lobby, which is jointly shared with Eurojust, a judicial agency of the European Union, cost 50,000 euro, 66,000 US dollars, according to diplomatic sources.
Given that the ICC is due to move to new premises within the next couple of years, such apparently lavish spending rankles with the governments that pay for it, particularly at a time when they are cutting expenditure at home.
The 25,000 euro spent on the lobby – Eurojust paid the other half – is of course just a tiny fraction of the court’s overall budget, set at 109 million euro, 145 million dollars, for 2013. Court insiders say that the new lobby has improved security and saves energy through better insulation, thus reducing costs.
For officials in many of the contributing states, however, this kind of expenditure is symptomatic of the way the court operates, and is one of the reasons why they are reluctant to give it the money it badly needs.
Questions have been raised about a wide range of ICC expenditure, from travel costs to current management structures, and the contributing countries want action.
“We believe there is a need for the ICC to challenge itself more on its needs and required budget so that it can ensure that its operations are as effective and efficient as possible,” a spokesperson for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office told IWPR. “It isn’t possible to put a price on justice, but there are areas where we need more information from the court as to how certain budget lines are spent and how they contribute to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the court.”
Other governments that are major contributors to the ICC budget hold similar views, although officials were not willing to be quoted on the record.
DOUBTS ABOUT FINANCIAL PRUDENCE
The ICC’s budget is set by the Assembly of the States Parties to the Rome Statute or ASP, made up of the governments which signed up to the court’s founding charter. In recent years, the ASP has been criticised for adopting a zero-growth policy for funding the court, even though the geographical scope of investigations has greatly expanded.
Many ASP members question whether the court is getting the most out of its current budget. The thinking is that if the ICC cannot be trusted to make every penny count, then it should not be entitled to more money.
Some have voiced concerns, for example, over the amount being spent to furnish the ICC’s new headquarters, which it is due to move into in 2015. New desks in the building reportedly cost 6,000 euro each.
According to the FCO, the British government has asked the court to provide more information about why certain costs are so high, with a view to “challeng[ing] their assumptions in order to reduce costs”.
"These areas include things like the cost of office equipment, travel and provision of services,” the FCO spokesperson said. “We are asking [the court] to be creative and inventive in how it finds efficiencies, for example through procurement, and revising policies so as to reduce costs – [such as] how long computers are kept for – so that this money can be used in support of the court’s work in other areas.”
Herman von Hebel, who replaced Silvana Arbia as the court’s registrar in March, recognises these concerns and has promised to address them.
“It is all about developing trust,” he told IWPR. “What I would like to do is develop a transparent discussion with the ASP to show exactly what our needs are and what we can do with the money that we are being provided with. When we speak about efficiency, there’s always room for critically assessing one’s own working methods.”
Von Hebel says that one of his priorities will be to look at the registry – the body in charge of administrative and financial management at the ICC – and to explore ways of doing more for less money.
“We need to be very specific about exactly what our needs are,” he said. “I think that this is something that could be done not only within the registry, but on a court-wide basis.”
Von Hebel certainly has the credentials for tackling budgetary constraints, and member states seem to have faith that he will make a difference.
He spent three years as deputy registrar and then registrar at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown, followed by a similar period as deputy registrar and then registrar at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in The Hague.
Both of those courts rely heavily on short-term voluntary funding, which often places tremendous pressure on their budgets.
“In these other tribunals, I led forthright internal discussions about our needs and resources, and was often perceived as tough in terms of the budget,” Von Hebel said. “Perhaps this is my Dutch nationality, but I hope that this is a reputation I will also have with the Assembly [of States Parties].”
PRESSING NEED FOR MORE FUNDS
There has never been greater urgency for the ICC to show that it is a responsible organisation that can be entrusted with more funding.
The court has come in for serious criticism in recent months following a string of failed investigations that have left prosecutors unable to bring enough evidence against suspects. (See ICC Under Fire Over Investigations .)
Supporters of the court say the Office of the Prosecutor is overstretched and needs more funding to enable it to conduct investigations to the necessary standard.
Four years ago, the ICC was investigating just four situations, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Darfur and the Central African Republic. Since then, it has added four more investigations, in Kenya, Libya, Mali, and the Ivory Coast.
At the same time, the court’s budget has barely increased at all, inching up from 101 million euro in 2009 to this year’s 109 million.
“We see that there’s a real problem with the number of investigations increasing whilst the number of investigation teams remain the same,” Jonathan O’Donohue, legal adviser at the advocacy organisation Amnesty International, said. “Staff often have to be moved around in order to cover the increased workload. The ultimate goal must be for the court to function effectively, but this is constantly overshadowed by the zero-growth argument.”
Von Hebel recognises that certain areas of the court are in desperate need of more funding, and he hopes that by making savings elsewhere he can persuade member states to increase the overall allocation.
“The prosecutor is in dire need of more resources to do investigations,” said Von Hebel. “Compared with other courts and tribunals, the number of staff per investigation is extremely low. If you have eight situations and just over 60 investigators, then you have a very tough job. We have discussed already with the prosecutor how we can internally streamline to further support this work. All member states have significant financial challenges at the moment, so we need to recognise this and create a culture of transparency, trust and confidence within our organisation.”
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
It is too early to tell whether the new registrar’s good intentions will make a meaningful difference to ICC expenditure, and there are few signs that member states are prepared to loosen their purse strings just yet.
This year’s negotiations on the budget are under way, and it is unlikely that anything more than a very slight increase will be agreed when member states meet in New York in November.
Still, diplomatic sources indicate that if the ICC is able to increase the ASP’s confidence in it by demonstrating a high level of transparency, subsequent years could see real steps towards addressing its funding needs.
"The court's willingness to respond to requests from the ASP on how it views and manages its budget has improved over the last few years,” the FCO spokesperson said. “We can see a growing partnership between the ASP and the court to develop and improve the overall efficiency of its operations.”
A source in another ASP member told IWPR, "The ICC has not always fostered a high level of trust with member states, which can make it difficult for the court to clearly show that it should be entitled to more funds. Things have improved noticeably since the low point of 2010, though, and we hope this continues.”
Von Hebel says that it is soon to say which areas can be subject to efficiency savings. Nevertheless, a draft report prepared by the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers offers some clues.
The document, seen by IWPR, was prepared at the request of the ASP’s Committee on Budget and Finance, which wanted an external assessment of the court’s organisational structure and a view on where savings might be made.
The report focuses primarily on changes to the registry and the judiciary. A separate report looking at the Office of the Prosecutor is being worked on at the moment.
“It can be concluded that the registry should seek to reduce its structural complexity with clear hierarchical and escalation lines, with a view to strengthening internal (and thereby external) cooperation and coordination,” the report states.
In his interview with IWPR, Von Hebel indicated that the registry’s managerial structure was an area he would be looking at.
The report also says that the registry suffers from a lack of adequate performance measurements, hampering efficient and targeted application of budget funds.
The report also recommended better communication among different ICC departments, suggesting that some of their functions may overlap.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants also tackled the issue of staffing, which, according to the latest figures from the court, eats up nearly 70 per cent of the budget.
Finally, the report notes a lack of staff motivation in some areas of the court, largely caused by a lack of career opportunities and general dissatisfaction with the performance appraisal system.
MEASURING JUSTICE
In national courts, it is quite common to use a series of benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of the justice process.
Pim Albers is a policy advisor within the Dutch ministry of justice and a senior researcher at the Hague Institute for Global Justice. He says it is normal practice, for example, to look at the duration of cases of a similar type and the ratio between incoming and completed cases.
However, it is not clear whether this would readily translate to the sphere of international justice, given the many variables that affect the success of any given investigation or prosecution.
“A court is not a factory that produces shoes,” Von Hebel said. “There are all sorts of factors that determine the effectiveness of the court. Whilst it may be useful to have a look at some quantitative factors such as the number of court hearings or the number of ongoing investigations, it’s also a question of what you can achieve on the ground, and it’s far too early in the court’s lifespan to make a complete assessment of this.”
Albers recognises that things work very differently at the ICC, and that there are huge challenges in comparing one trial or country situation with another. However, he thinks that some steps could be taken in this direction.
“It would be useful if the ICC could publish a breakdown of the time required by staff in order to reach a judgement,” he said. “It would be useful to measure how long it takes to prepare an indictment, how much time is spent on the investigation, how long the trial phase lasts. Then the court might be able to draw some useful conclusions about where cost savings would make most sense.”
Albers points out that such performance indicators might also reveal other valuable facts about the process of international justice, beyond merely where inefficiencies lie.
He suggests, for example, that it might be helpful to compare the number of indictments with the number of trials concluding, either in a conviction or an acquittal.
“A particularly high ratio... could indicate a high-level of cooperation with the situation country,” he said. “Conversely, a particularly low ratio may mean the level of cooperation is insufficient and steps should be taken. Performance indicators are useful at showing where the bottlenecks lie.”
Patrick Vinck, a research scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a centre within Harvard university, has been looking at ways in which indicators can be used to measure the effectiveness of outreach – the efforts made to communicate with people affected by the trial in the country concerned.
In the past, the court has been criticised for cutting its outreach programmes too quickly, since they are often viewed as a “non-core” function. This is something that Von Hebel wants to change.
“The key challenge is to decide what exactly you are trying to measure and what you are trying to do with outreach,” Vinck said. “If you are only trying to measure how much people have heard about the court or a particular trial, then things are fairly straightforward. But if you’re trying to capture true understanding of the trials, then measuring the impact becomes much more complex.”
Vinck says the methodology he uses is the same as might be used to measure the extent of a disease.
“We interview representative samples of the population and use this data to measure the prevalence of knowledge, attitudes and perceptions,” he said.
Whilst Vinck does not think it makes sense for benchmarks to be used to shape the budget, he nonetheless sees it as important to gather this kind of data, as a way of finding out whether ICC outreach work is effective, and whether more funding is needed. For example, past research into outreach activities in the Central African Republic, CAR, revealed that awareness of the ICC was especially low among women, even though gender-based violence forms a large component of the ongoing case against Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese politician accused of crimes in CAR.
“The budget for outreach in the ICC is ridiculously small,” said Vinck. “By evaluating their own work and effectiveness, outreach units can better demonstrate what their needs are.”
Blake Evans-Pritchard is an IWPR contributor in The Hague and Simon Jennings is IWPR’s Africa Editor in London.
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