About a week ago, the International Criminal Court announced that Fatou Bensouda would succeed Luis Moreno Ocampo as Chief Prosecutor. This could be big news, but you wouldn’t know it from The New York Times, who barely reported the announcement.
Fatou Bensouda is from Gambia. And she means business. Some people think she may be exactly what is needed to set things right.
As a woman, as an African woman, she’s had it with waiting for the world to recognize violence against women as a crime against humanity.
According to Bensouda, part of the problem of addressing sexual and gender violence has been the logic of inevitability. By this logic, rape happens as an “incidental” and “necessary” part of the machinery of warfare. It’s like “tradition”. The word absolves practitioners, and everybody else, of responsibility as it cleanses the field of any history. Bensouda argues that the military use of sexual violence does have a history of change. For example, in recent years, it has begun to be used systematically as a weapon of war and as “part of the military machinery to fuel the fighting soldiers.”
But the core of the refusal to address sexual and gender violence is the refusal to care about women:
Outside a prison context, targets of gender crimes are overwhelmingly female. The victims of certain crimes, such as forced impregnation and forced abortion are exclusively women and girls. This may explain why the progress made globally in recognizing, prohibiting, and finally enforcing gender crimes perpetrated in armed combat has been extremely slow.
The world has been extremely slow to address sexual and gender crimes. Not ‘Africa’. Not ‘Africans’. The world. African women, like Bensouda and like the ICC women judges from Mali, Ghana, Kenya and Botswana, join with women around the world in being fed up. In an interview two years ago, Bensouda said, “I am speaking as an African woman… And the African woman’s voice is getting louder and louder, whether as advocate or whether as a victim.” Individually louder and louder. Collectively louder and louder.
This is needed especially since violence against women in the east of DRCongo hasn’t decreased despite the celebrities such as Oprah and Ben Affleck who have opposed it. There’s just no end to this fight.
BTW @Jomul7: Some Congolese activists are wondering where celebrities are this past week when Kabila’s stormtroops are slaughtering Congolese.
Sorry, but I don’t have much hope of change coming from this woman. Just ask yourself. Who is her boss? The White Man.
Speaking of rape, have a look this report
http://jezebel.com/5866602/can-you-tell-the-difference-between-a-mens-magazine-and-a-rapist
@Tayat: C’mon that’s too easy and reductionist: “Who is her boss. The White Man.” She can’t think for herself?
Agree, that was too easy.
@jomul7: Agreed. Celebrities cannot displace the real work of day to day struggle.
@Tayat: Agreed, but perhaps hope comes precisely the resistant and insurgent workers? We’ll have to watch. Thanks for the Jezebel piece. I’d seen the study … it’s both not surprising and shocking.
Please..
The more relevant point is who she worked for. She was Solicitor General and Minister of Justice for YAHYA JAMMEH — One of the most brutal dictators in Africa today. Why don’t we talk about all the murders and disappearances and arbitrary arrests that happened while she was working for the Gambia Government. Actually, forget that, let’s talk about the even greater evil things that have happened since she left in 2000. Cocaine smuggling, arms trafficking, Sadibou Hydara, Baba Jobe — these are just some people she saw and knew. Everybody who stood next to Jammeh and helped him consolidate power and knows about his evil deals is dead or in jail. Google the names. The Google the names of honorable men like Deyda Hydara and Ebraima Manneh. They’re dead too and these are just the tip of a mountain of bodies. She’s at the ICC and you don’t even hear a peep about what is going on in her own country. Ridiculous.
@W Jaiteh: On that score, the BBC reports:
Mrs Bensouda was once a politician, with Gambian President Yahya Jammeh – who took power in a coup in 1994 and is accused of harassing the opposition and the press – appointing her as justice minister in 1998.
But the two fell out and Mr Jammeh sacked her about two years later.
“She was relieved of her duties while she was abroad,” Gambian opposition leader Ousainou Darboe told the BBC.
http://bbc.in/sedWPR
On
Touche.
Neatly written by the BBC to give her nice, clean hands. I concede that it’s more than any other article I’ve seen on her has ever mentioned.
Look, Jammeh has sacked and re-hired (some of them do come back!) almost every minister who’s worked for him. That’s why I specifically said “let’s talk about the even greater evil things that have happened since she left in 2000″. She may very well have been a moderating force in the Gambia Government, but no Gambian is unaware of what is happening in that country. “Harassing the press and opposition” makes Jammeh sound like a sweetheart. There are precious few people in a position to do something about Jammeh. She’s one, and she’s done nothing. Every year, Jammeh kills or jails another person who can pin him down on the issues. Evidence of his most serious crimes is increasingly turning circumstantial.
Speaking of the devil
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16148458
On the one hand, I almost wish the BBC, or the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/world/europe/fatou-bensouda-becomes-lead-prosecutor-at-international-criminal-court.html?_r=1&ref=world , cared enough about anyone or anything in The Gambia to give them clean hands. Today’s article from the Times is the first time they begin with “Gambia” rather than “Africa” when discussing Bensouda. Of course, no context but hey … On the other and more important hand, Fatou Bensouda did have a falling out, actually more than `a falling out’, with/from Jammeh, and I for one don’t think that’s nothing. I rather think, following her later career, that seeing the evil from inside `the system’ affected her greatly. But … let’s see what the next nine years bring.
Bensouda addresses UN Security Council http://observer.gm/africa/gambia/article/bensouda-addresses-un-security-council
Kenya frustrating justice, says ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda http://www.nation.co.ke/News/politics/ICC-accuses-Kenya-of-hiding-evidence/-/1064/1662094/-/jaacli/-/index.html