What the ICJ did not say about the Duty to Punish Genocide: The Missing Pieces in a Puzzle

The article focuses on the legal implications of the constructionof the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the Court) ofthe duty to punish genocide under Article VI of the Conventionon the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide inthe Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro judgment.It posits that the Court's discussion of the duty to punishis satisfying in terms of what it says and less satisfying interms of what it is silent about. It is satisfying in the sensethat the Court's construction of the duty to cooperate withinternational tribunals prosecuting genocide as including aduty of extradition, seems to extend beyond the plain languageof the Convention and indeed beyond the parties’ originalintent. It is not fully satisfying because the duty to prosecuteremains quite limited. It is further argued that the obligationto punish genocide as established in Article I and the obligationto prosecute genocide as established in Article VI should beunderstood as two distinct obligations. Article VI merely setsthe institutional arrangements for prosecution. Other normativesources support the conclusion that a general duty to prosecuteperpetrators of genocide or extradite them for prosecution elsewhereapplies even in those cases where the offence was not committedin the territory of a contracting state or when the offenderis prosecuted by an international court that has jurisdictionover the state where the alleged perpetrator is found.     

The post-cold war political topography of the Middle East: prospects for democracy

The debate on democracy in the Middle East has generated many important questions but has, so far, answered few of them satisfactorily. This paper endeavours to understand the prospects and problems for democracy in the region by making visible the connections between this issue and one of the least explored and understood aspects of the contemporary Middle East: how the suppression of communist, socialist, and other leftist and reformist political movements in the region after World War II affected and continues to affect the region's economic and political development. It details the campaign in the 1950s and 1960s to eradicate not only communists and socialists but any element in the region calling for democratic government or land reform. The result of this campaign was to suppress liberal, reformist and progressive elements in the region that, in Europe and elsewhere, supported and encouraged the democratisation of national politics.     

Return to Havana

He is author of The Taming of Fidel Castroand other works on Cuba and the Caribbean.     

In Person

Miri Frankel is Manager, Legal Affairs, with The Beanstalk Group,which develops and manages turn-key, strategic global licensingprogrammes on behalf of owners of famous brands and trade marks.Beanstalk's clients include Harley–Davidson, Jim Beam,Jack Daniels, Shell and Volvo. Miri, a New Yorker, holds degreesfrom New York University and     

Spousal Violence Among Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union—General Population and Welfare Recipients

This study examines psychological and marital risk factors of 322 immigrant FSU couples in Israel. The research focuses on two populations: the general immigrant population and the welfare immigrant population; the latter group is comprised of couples treated in welfare service departments. The dependent variable is spousal violence. The independent variables are: education level, gender, symbolic loss, psychological adjustment (both positive and negative emotions) and the “cultural–familial gap”. Surprisingly, it was found that the welfare immigrant population reports less spousal violence than the regular immigrant population. In addition, a correlation was found between spousal violence and the following factors: higher education, lower level of psychological adjustment and greater familial-cultural gap between the country of origin and Israel. The discussion focuses on the characteristics of FSU immigrants—educational level and orientation towards cultural preservation—within the Israeli context that connects to psychological responses which, in turn, creates spousal violence.     

Co-optation,competition and resistance: mediation and divorce professionals in Israel

This paper investigates the development of family mediation in Israel within the theoretical framework of the competition between professions (Abbott, 1988; Shamir, 1993), and the co-optation model of Coy and Hedeen (2005). It describes the formal institutionalization of family mediation in Israel and examines the claims made by lawyers, therapeutic mediators, and lawyer-mediators about the nature and boundaries of their professional enterprise and their goals and practices. Based on 254 questionnaires, semi-structured taped interviews and professional documents, our study found differences in the way the professionals construct the nature of the competition over mediation. While lawyers describe mediators as invading their realm of divorce practice, therapeutic professionals view mediation as a new field of knowledge which they are claiming as their own, in competition with legal professionals. Moreover, although elements of Coy and Hedeen's (2005) co-optation model were useful in describing the developing relationship between the divorce professionals, we found different strategies of resistance at each stage of the process.     

La transmission intergénérationnelle de l’orientation idéologique en Suisse dans les familles à plusieurs générations

Ce texte est consacré à la transmission à court terme de l’orientation idéologique gauche‐ droite entre parents et enfants; il utilise les données du Panel suisse de ménages ( www.swisspanel.ch ), qui permet de mener des analyses dans les ménages à plusieurs générations. Les résultats confirment qu’il existe bien une transmission de l’orientation idéologique gauche‐droite entre parents et enfants, qui se fait différemment selon le sexe des parents et des enfants. A court terme, cette transmission se fait plus facilement dans les milieux éduqués, aisés et politisés, ce qui signifie paradoxalement que parmi les jeunes électeurs, ce sont ceux issus de milieux défavorisés ou non intéressés à la politique qui ont la probabilité la plus élevée de changer l’équilibre des forces politiques en présence.