Professor Ohlins from the law school cam as the guest speaker for this week’s Café Series. We had a fascinating discussion about international criminal law, focusing specifically on war crimes.

In the beginning of the night, we had a poll everywhere question naming war criminals we knew that were/are very terrible. A few big names from the work cloud were Omar, Al Bashir. House professor Garrick was also on the list as a form of amusement (I hope). We started off the discussion by talking about the Afghanistan incident involving the bombing of a hospital with Doctors without Borders workers. The bombing killed 22 people and the question was whether it was a war crime or not.

That led into a discussion of what constitutes a war crime and what happens if it is. Basically a hospital is seen as a protected place, and is not really supposed to be attacked in war. While the main rule is that soldiers cannot kill civilians, they can kill civilians when justified. Justifications are not based on any rule or numerical value, but rather the worth and appropriation of the aftermath. If the target that the military was looking for was extremely dangerous, then killing civilians is justified. If it just one person that is being targeted and a million civilians may not be justified.

We then got into a discussion about the International Crime Court and its power and involvement in war criminal trials. The United States is not a member of the international crime court, interestingly enough. There were three problems mentioned with the pursuit of a war criminal to be put on trial by the ICC. Two of the major problems are that the country must be a part of the ICC and the fact that war crimes happen everyday. There is also no police force so they can’t physically bring the criminal to court. However, if you are a criminal an arrest warrant is issued, meaning that any country part of the ICC must arrest that person.

Yet another problem is that presidents and other world leaders have sovereign immunity so we can’t arrest them. The argument here is the state the country will be in if the leader is removed. I personally think that if the leader is a war criminal, the country might actually be better off with his removal. Diplomatic immunity impeded in another case concerning South Africa and the pursuit of a president committing mass murders of his people. The countries that don’t follow through have no real punishment, as the security counsel does not do anything.

The professor wrapped up with a brief order of the view the ICC has: Crimes against humanity >War criminal > than diplomatic immunity. I completely agree with the ICC view and it’s a shame that their policies aren’t really enforced.