Andrea Russell, a lawyer, previously taught International Criminal Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
More than 20 years.
That's how long it took for Ratko Mladic, the so-called "Butcher of Bosnia" and the mastermind of the Srebrenica Genocide, to be found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. A United Nations war crimes tribunal sentenced Mr. Mladic – who faced the verdict literally shouting in disgust at the presiding judge – to the remainder of his life in prison on Nov. 22.
Having sat in an otherwise empty observers' gallery, watching the long, slow proceedings in The Hague against him, I can attest that Mr. Mladic sneered and snarled his way through the years-long trial, claiming until the end that the case against him was all lies.
When in 1993 the UN Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, many heralded the creation of an international body that would hold perpetrators of horrific crimes to account for the first time since Nuremberg. Some hoped that the formation of the tribunal, specifically empowered to examine war crimes such as those committed by Mr. Mladic and his Bosnian Serb contemporaries Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, might actually deter those overseeing Bosnian rape and concentration camps from committing further crimes.
It was not to be. The atrocities continued, and even as the tribunal was putting the final touches on its initial indictment of Mr. Mladic in July, 1995, Mr. Mladic was visiting the Srebrenica "safe area," reassuring women and children that all would be fine, before – we can now confirm – giving orders for the men to be separated from those women and children and then systematically shot into pits surrounding the safe zone.
Today, a new, permanent war crimes court sits in the The Hague. In theory, the International Criminal Court, given its permanent nature, might deter similar thugs in other conflicts across the globe from engaging in the kinds of atrocities that Mr. Mladic and company oversaw.
And yet the ICC has major gaps permanently baked into its jurisdiction. It can only investigate conflicts or atrocities committed in countries that have chosen formally to join the court. Syria – and Myanmar – have not done so. And while the UN Security Council has the power to refer a situation to the court, if a country has a strong ally on the Security Council, it will enjoy ongoing immunity from the court's investigatory powers.
Russia is Syria's ally, and it has blocked an attempted formal referral of the Syrian conflict to the court. It is clear that those countries making the referral knew that it was unlikely to be a successful attempt – but they did, at least, make the attempt.
In the interim, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad enjoys immunity and clearly feels unthreatened by the mere existence of a war crimes court thousands of miles away.
Myanmar's army generals clearly feel similarly undeterred by a court to which they do not belong. They feel free to plan systematic campaigns of sexual violence and sexual slavery, of the wanton murder of Rohingya babies and the torture of their fathers, and the destruction through arson of Rohingya settlements.
In the absence of a referral of the Rohingya situation to the International Criminal Court, who will hold Myanmar's own Mladic to account? We are witnessing, as many experts have intoned, textbook cases of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. And yet efforts at deterrence, let alone accountability, are lacking. Until Myanmar's generals are meant to feel that they risk genuine accountability for their actions, they will continue, it would seem, until the last of the Rohingya Muslims has left their land.
Canada is not a member of the Security Council and does not have the power, alone, to put forward a council resolution referring the Rohingya situation to the International Criminal Court. And yet we do have a voice – a strong, respected voice on the international scene.
It is too late for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have died in their civil war. But for the Rohingya men, women and children whose very existence is challenged by Myanmar's own Mladic-like generals, there may still be hope.
Canada must find its voice and speak up for accountability for the Rohingya today.