How does the law influence war? Sarah talks with international lawyer Benjamin Duerr about what justice and peace mean from a legal standpoint in the final episode in our series on war.
How does the law influence war? Sarah talks with international lawyer Benjamin Duerr about what justice and peace mean from a legal standpoint in the final episode in our series on war.
Sources Consulted:
* If you have a question about war, or if there’s something else going on in the world that you want us to break down, write to us or record a message and email us at listen@akidsco.com.
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.
Sarah Jones Breaks It Down: A Kids News Podcast
S1 EP06, War Part 5: Peace, Justice and Peacekeeping
[INTRODUCTION]
Sarah: This is Sarah Jones Breaks It Down.
I’m Sarah, and I’m here to help us better understand what’s happening in the world.
Why?
Because, as a journalist, that’s my job. And this world isn’t just filled with adults…
Julia: Nope!
Sarah: It’s our world.
So, every week we’ll talk about the stories that you may overhear some adults talking about and we’ll…
Group of Kids: Break it down.
Sarah: Break. It. Down.
[TOPLINE]
Sarah: Let’s get into it: peace and justice.
They’re powerful words.
And these two words? They can mean different things to different people.
I’ve interviewed lots of kids who have survived war. And something that always strikes me, is peace is the one thing they want the most. Not justice. Not revenge. Even if they’ve seen their parents murdered before their very eyes.
I've always wondered at what have they witnessed enough violence that they no longer want peace, but they now want revenge or justice.
What makes us want revenge over peace and justice? Because there is a turning point, and I still don't know what it is after all the kids I've talked to.
And what are the keys to peace and justice lasting? Because I look at war as something that doesn't necessarily have a stark beginning and end.
Sometimes previous wars impact a generation so deeply that how they feel after the war causes another war when that generation grows up.
But the future is not written in stone.
And you as a child, you have more power and control over peace then many adults give you credit for.
You guys determine what the future looks like.
[BREAKDOWN]
Sarah: So, peace and justice. Let’s break it down starting with the legal side of things. And who better to help do that, than international lawyer Benjamin Duerr.
So Benjamin, in the last episode you mentioned that although rule breakers exist, there are international laws when it comes to war.
Benjamin: Wars are strictly regulated as to what the parties are allowed to do, what weapons they can use, how they should behave, what kind of methods and means of warfare are allowed.
And I think that's maybe the biggest misconception: that everything is allowed in war, but that's actually not the case.
Sarah: And these rules and regulations are laid out in treaties and conventions.
Benjamin: So there are a few, a few fundamental rules.
One is, for example, that a distinction must made between civilians and soldiers. Um, so people who are not fighting or who were not participating in, in the fighting, they can never be targeted.
Sarah: Another rule is against the use of chemical weapons. You may have also seen the hashtag “not a target”. That applies to when buildings that are not supposed to be attacked have been targeted in war.
Benjamin: In principle, for example, hospitals or schools or churches cannot be attacked.
Sarah: And because hospitals, schools and places of worship are supposed to be safe places for civilians, some armed groups or soldiers illegally use them as places to hide. Putting civilians, who are not directly involved in the conflict at risk, and using them as human shields.
Benjamin: There it becomes all really complicated, because there are very few cases when it is still possible to target them because, for example, if soldiers hide in school, um, then that building could be a target because then it becomes a military objective and that would mean that it could be targeted.
Sarah: But regardless, the rules are war state civilians are not to be targeted.
But as you’ve probably learned in our episodes so far. very little in this world fits into a box. There’s a lot of gray.
Benjamin: Yeah, exactly. I think even though the laws are sometimes violated, it doesn't mean that they're not important.
You can compare it to laws in our countries where there it also happens. I mean, cases of murder or theft or robbery, these kind of things happen around the world and the same applies to the laws of war.
Sarah: So what happens when someone breaks a rule of war?
Benjamin: The next step, um, to prosecute those who violate the notes, um, because only if there are consequences, um, or when they're consequences, people are more likely to follow, uh, the rules.
And that’s why we have international courts. That's why we use sanctions to punish those who violate the laws.
Sarah: When it comes to state level or national level there's police. There are people that help enforce the laws. Is there anyone that helps enforce the international laws?
Benjamin: No exactly. That's that's exactly right.
So at the state level we have police forces who can enforce the law. But the biggest difference with the international level is that we don't have an international police force, which means that the enforcement of the law at the international level is much more difficult.
So the enforcement of international law really relies on the domestic police forces who works together with international courts, for example, but also among them, we have different organizations, for example, Interpol, which coordinates the different police forces across border, but there are no real international police forces that could intervene in, in all countries. So it's still very much up to the domestic forces to enforce the law.
Sarah: But there are ways to enforce international law.
For example sanctions which can impact an individual's ability to travel or access their money. And also, the court system.
Benjamin: National courts can open investigations and then prosecute the individuals. And we have international courts that usually, um, go behind the more high level people like precedent or military leaders. And they work together with state police forces and investigators and try to process the high level individually for various crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide.
Sarah: The court that goes after the decision makers who allowed or ordered for war crimes to occur is called the International Criminal Court or ICC and it’s based in the Hague in the Netherlands.
Benjamin: So if the person is found guilty, he or she can be imprisoned for quite long time, up to 30 years.
In general, then there are some specific aspects that make it more difficult, for example, that there is no, what we just discussed, there's no police force to arrest people. So it still relies on the domestic police forces.
So there was no international prison, but when a person is found guilty, he or she would be sent to a prison or another country.
Sarah: But this kind of prosecution or trial doesn’t happen overnight.
Benjamin: The persons can be tried as long as they live. That doesn’t expire. Also the arrest warrants. That doesn’t expire. Very often takes a very long time until these persons, uh, face a trial that has to do the difficulty to arrest them. It has to do with the circumstances and there needs to be a change in government or the fall of a regime, for example, that the suspects are arrested.
But we’ve seen many cases where individuals have been arrested and tried some 10, 20, 30 years after the crimes have been committed.
We also see, for example, in Europe, still cases that individuals who committed crimes in the second World War are still put on trial today. And they're sometimes in their eighties or nineties, very long times after the crimes have been committed.
Sarah: Justice, or holding people accountable doesn’t happen quickly. It takes time to gather witnesses and evidence, and often one has to wait for the person in power to fall out of power to go after them.
Benjamin: Justice very often takes, takes a long time.
Sarah: The ICC is funded by its members. And not every country in the world is a member.
Benjamin: There are a few countries that are not a member of the ICC. The US, for example, China, Russia, India. And that means that the court cannot investigate cases that are committed in these countries. And that they also don't get money from these countries and the collaboration between the court and these countries is, is more difficult.
Sarah: Russia is not a member of the ICC.
Some media outlets have suggested that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was illegal.
There have been reports of alleged war crimes in Ukraine, since Russia is not a member of the ICC.
Does that mean that the people that are allegedly perpetrators of these crimes will not be held responsible? Or what does, what does that mean?
Benjamin: No, it doesn't mean that these people cannot be held responsible.
In fact, there are different attempts at the moment to hold them accountable.One is at the national level. For example, Ukraine has opened investigations.
There are investigations missions by the United nations that are collecting evidence of potential war crimes.
Even if they're committed by Russians, uh, they could still be held accountable because if the crimes are committed in a country that is a member of the court or supposed to court, um, then even foreigners, um, can be held accountable.
The difficulty will be of course to arrest people.
Sarah: We talked a little bit about, um, Russia and Ukraine. There's also Syria.
Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes there. The Afghan Taliban. We've heard of alleged war crimes happening there and also alleged war crimes in the Tigray region. How come nothing's happening there yet? Is that a matter of regime change?
Benjamin: Yeah, I guess the examples that you mentioned, Syria, Ethiopia are maybe the most disappointing cases where we clearly see that international law is violated, but that very little is happening. And that has to do mainly with a lack of political will and with power politics, really.
Because of these geopolitical aspects that also influence how the law is applied because some powerful states can prevent it from being applied or from the ICC becoming involved.
Sarah: So holding someone accountable for war crimes isn’t easy. But most things in life, are pretty complex. But what is justice?
Tara: To me really, justice is fairness.
Benjamin: Justice is the feeling of being fine with the past.
So, accepting what happened and being able to, yeah in a way close to what happened.
But there's also that element of the law, of course, that justice also means that the law is enforced. People who have committed a crime are punished.
Sarah: Is justice always fair?
Benjamin: No. I think justice is not always fair because even if someone is convicted, for example, it doesn't mean that the person who has suffered with the victim feels that that's a fair sentence.
Sarah: Benjamin told us that individuals who committed war crimes in World War II are being tried today, nearly 70 years after the war. So is it still justice even if someone is being held accountable decades later?
Tara: Depending on the extent I would probably say, see, I don't know, cause that's a difficult one because with there being that many years in between, like so much can change. So many people can change because some people are just they're following what they're told to do, and that might not even be who they are as a person.
So if they're going to get disciplined, if you will, for something that they did 20, 30 years ago, because it was either someone else's life or their life where you do this, or, you know, we kill you or whatever it may be, that that's a tough one.
Benjamin: I don't think that justice expires or has an end date.
Hozan: I think the international criminal court has a great job to prosecute people, committed genocides crimes against humanity or war crimes.
It's been one of the main demands of syrian people that those who committed crimes in Syria should be held accountable. And we have a great hope in the international criminal court that will bring justice to victims.
Ahmad: Justice is to everybody who were a responsibility for what happened in Syria,. Those people they have to get a punishment for it.
Leo: Justice would be when those who commit crimes are identified and held accountable. And it could be by a court of law.
And sometimes if you can't actually get ahold of people
Justice is more like an ideal. It's an ultimate goal to treat people fairly. To have respect for people. If you have differences, to solve them by discussions and by compromise and not simply by killing people or repressing them because they're different because they have a different language, different background or different skin color.
That is injustice: when people are treated unfairly like that, um, it takes an effort by everyone though.
It takes an effort by everyone to build a more just world.
Sarah: Is it possible to have peace without justice?
Leo: You can have peace, meaning we absence of war, and have no justice.
Janie: It’s a very interesting question when you put the peace and justice together, because often people are saying, “Do we want peace or do we want justice?”
And it's going back to the war crime that is being committed because in the past to have peace, they were saying to people who commit a war crime, “Stop the fight, and we would forgive you about the crime that you did.” So they were focusing on peace and they were forgetting, forgetting about justice.
Then the population was saying, “Okay, this is not right.”
And when you do this, there are studies that show that peace without justice makes this peace not lasting because people don't forgive and don't forget.
So for me, peace is when you reach a status that people forgive each other, and that people who commit a human right abuse or war crime are brought to justice. So for myself, you need to have justice before peace, but these take longer.
Sarah: Janie was part of two very different peacekeeping missions. The first was in Bosnia.
Janie: So the peacekeeping mission was there after the conflict, when they have a peace agreement between both parties and both parties were willing to stop the process to rebuild and to, to list together. And then after that, I've been to Afghanistan in 2004, two years. And then they are, the parties didn't agree for us to be there.
So the peacekeeping mission was there to try to negotiate a peace agreement.
When you go in a country where they already have peace, you don't have to come with a lot of a weapon. But when you go to a country where people don't agree to have peace.
You need to come with a weapon to make sure that you're able to, uh, provide safety to the population because people are still fighting. So a lot of conflict now are like this.
Sarah: And just as war has evolved because of technology, so has peacekeeping.
Janie: Now, peacekeeping mission need to consider also the cyber operation and they need to consider the information.
Sarah: And peacekeeping is about far more than just stopping armed conflict.
Janie: When I was going to work with the orphanage in Bosnia. People are fighting each other and then they have to be able to pass over what they sold during the war and come back as one population for the country.
So when I was there, I was walking with the kids because the kids, they look at the parents in the do the same thing that the parents and the parents, they are using sign that make them divide. So let's say when they were raising their hand at school to ask a question, if they were look like Serb, they were raising their hands with two, two.
And when, if they were Muslim, they were raising their end with three finger.
Sarah: The way the kids were raising their hands in school was making it easy for everyone to identify if they were Serbian or Bosnian.
Janie’s task was to observe the classroom and to find cohesions helping Serbians and Bosnians together to move forward as one nation.
Janie: We were just telling them how to raise the hand. So instead to do two finger or three finger, you raise your hand.
So, not to choose one or the other, but to make sure that this is a sign that in each other country, this is how they do it.
We didn't say, “That it's wrong to do two fingers or three fingers.” Because it's right. But because we've got to, as one team, we want everybody to use the same wign. This is what we did with them.
Sarah: She says it’s pertinent to include children in peacekeeping.
Janie: Kids are crucial for rebuilding a country because they are the society of tomorrow.
Sarah: She says trust is another critical element of maintaining peace.
Janie: When people are fighting, they lose trust between each other. So the peacekeeping mission is that the trust agent between the parties to be able to rebuild.
Janie: But also the access to resources because you can share power, but then sharing power union that every part of the population access to the resource and in a similar way.
Sarah: That’s another reason education and maintaining low levels of unemployment are so pertinent after war. Schooling often gets disrupted during war, so to prevent future wars you have to work towards high employment among future generations.
Janie: Yes, because if you don't have other means to earn money, the armed group will propose you (means to earn money). They will give you a gun and they will give, give you food. And they will make you fight for their belief, not your belief, but you will fight with them because you will not have the other skill. ou will not have the means to be able to feed your family or to feed yourself.
Sarah: Long-term peace becomes impossible if a conflict leaves behind an immensely large gap in equality and access to resources.
Janie: This part of the population who don't have access to the resource, maybe they are fine right now, but in five or 10 years, they will start to be fine. And they are the one who is start again the war.
And the other thing is women need to have a space in the society because when the world is just considering what the men needs. You have 50% of the population who don't have what they need to be able to survive.
And they have a lot of study about that. So now peacekeeping mission try to involve all parts of the population.
When they agree how they will rebuild the population.
So now this is how they do the peacekeeping. They include all part of the society because they discovered that if they just take the people fight, you don't have a solution that will last.
[UNDER-REPORTED]
Sarah: So now you know more about peace, justice and peacekeeping.
But information is for everyone, and everyone matters.
Group of Kids: Everyone matters.
Sarah: So let’s talk about something that’s going on in the world that isn’t getting as much attention but should be. The term journalists use for that type of story is “under-reported”,
and news can be under-reported for lots of different reasons…
Sarah: Sri Lanka has been in the news, but you probably just saw people storming the presidential palace. And well, it's important to always understand the background and underlying cause for events. Instability like that doesn't just happen overnight.
Sri Lanka has been suffering from an economic crisis for a while. Basically the country hasn't had enough fuel, which caused petrol and diesel prices to soar.
Last month, the government even banned the sale of petrol and diesel for non-essential vehicles for two weeks.
Also countries usually borrow money from one another. That's kind of how the global economy works. But Sri Lanka now owes more than $51 billion to other countries, including 6.5 billion to China. So they've discussed doing loans. But loans mean interest, which can mean greater debt in the future.
Some people blame the president for the economic mismanagement or ex-president, I should say.
Others say the pandemic meant less tourists, which is a major source of the economy in Sri Lanka.
But there were also a series of issues before the pandemic, like the Easter bombings of 2019 and a nationwide policy to shift to organic or biological farming.
And when people are struggling to get basic necessities, they usually protest. Economic hardship usually causes political instability.
The shortage of fuel meant power cuts for people. It also meant shortage of food and medicines.
So people took to the streets. They protested, took over the palace, and the president has since fled the country.
So now there's a power vacuum, which means anybody could assert their power. Which makes Sri Lanka a place to watch.
[CLOSING]
Sarah: Thank you for listening and for breaking it down with me today.
If you have a question about war or peace or peacekeeping, or if there’s something else going on in the world that you want us to break down, write to us or record a message and email us at listen@akidsco.com.
Sarah Jones Breaks It Down is written and reported by me, Sarah Jones. You can learn more about me and my work at sarahjonesreports.com.
Our show is edited and produced by Matthew Winner with help from Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios.
Our executive producer is Jelani Memory. And this show was brought to you by A Kids Podcast About.
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.
Thank you for hanging out with me and stay curious!