حوارات الدوحة : الحوار القادم : هذه الدار تعتقد انه يجب على الدول العربية تسليم الرئيس السودانى

Quote: Next Debate 27th April 2009 This House believes that Arab states should hand over the Sudanese president to the International Criminal Court

Quote: The Doha Debates are chaired by the award-winning former BBC correspondent and interviewer Tim Sebastian, who founded them in 2004 and secured their editorial independence. Although the Debates are financed by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, no government, official body or broadcaster has any control over what is said at the sessions or who is invited.

Quote: The Doha Debates are a unique venture in the Arab world, providing a battleground for conflicting opinions and arguments about the major political topics of the region. While governments around the world tighten restrictions on press freedom, the Doha Debates openly dissect the vital issues of the Middle East in front of its people and on global TV. For the first time in their life, many young Arabs are having their say on key political questions – challenging politicians and experts face to face. They engage in time-honoured rivalry – where the only weapons are words. They practice the art of peaceful disagreement: understanding and respecting different views. It’s a new reality. A new way forward

Quote: Attend the DebatesTHE NEXT DOHA EVENT The next Doha Debate will be in late April. Please monitor our website for more information. To apply for tickets, please first read the important information below before filling in the registration form. Important information: If you are a student at a school, college or university in Doha, do not fill in the form. You need to contact your staff member who is the point person at your school for coordinating ticket requests for the Debates. If you don't know who to contact, please email us at: [email protected] and we will give you their name. However, if your school has not sent students to the Doha Debates before, please proceed to the form to apply for seats. Please note: Tickets are free of charge. We have 350 seats for each Debate. Seats are available to adults (over 15 years of age) living or visiting Doha, Qatar. If you are allocated a ticket but you are unable to attend the Debate, it is essential that you let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your ticket to someone on our waiting list. If you apply for tickets but are unsuccessful, please apply again for another Debate. There is a very high demand for tickets each month but we try to be as fair as possible and make sure that everyone gets a chance to attend at least one Debate in the series. Finally, the Doha Debates cannot pay for the air tickets and accommodation for anyone wanting to attend from abroad. We hope you can understand that we do not have the resources for this.

Quote: 7 March 2007 Justice and Peace in Darfur By Salih Mahmoud Osman Celebrations were loud in camps for the displaced last year, when Moreno-Ocampo announced he would commence an investigation; for the very first time there was a noticeable decline in aerial bombardment and militia attacks on civilians. But as time passed and no further impact of the ICC's investigation was seen on the ground, the situation in Darfur deteriorated significantly, fueled by a culture of impunity and the failure of the political processes. Former State Department official Stephen Rademaker, writing in the Washington Post in January, argued that the ICC is somehow an obstacle to peace in Darfur and that the government of Sudan's vehement resistance to the deployment of UN troops, for example, is linked to concern about the implementation of future arrest warrants. Certainly the reality of potential indictments colors the climate of calculation for the government. But for us—the people of Darfur who are survivors and victims of this ongoing catastrophe—there is no confusion between peace and justice. We believe that accountability must be an essential component of any campaign to "save Darfur" and cannot be separated from political negotiations, deployment of peacekeepers or humanitarian efforts. More than 4 million Darfurians have been directly affected by this crisis and some 500,000 are dead. Many have been killed by the government's aerial bombardment, which has been in concert with Janjaweed militias on the ground. More than 2,000 villages have been burned. Thousands of women and girls have been victims of rape. Our land has been depopulated and invaded. These heinous offenses constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes and possibly genocide. Justice along with security is the only way to stop the cycle of impunity and violence. The Sudanese judicial system is incapable of delivering justice to us in Darfur. International crimes are not adequately recognized under our national laws. Impenetrable immunity renders cases against members of the military and security forces almost impossible to pursue. Even the new special courts set up last year in Darfur have only heard a handful of cases, and none relating to the most serious crimes committed during this crisis. Victims and survivors in Darfur want the international community to support the ICC investigation. In fact, many refugees have said that justice is not only a precondition for return but also necessary for the consolidation of the political process. They believe that accountability is a vital link in building peace and trust—and deterring future crimes. The people of Darfur are not willing to sacrifice their legal right to justice to political bartering. The Sudanese government, on the other hand, is eager to seal a deal that exempts them from accountability. The government has opportunistically hinted that its reluctance to consent to a United Nations deployment to Darfur stems from fears that UN forces will be able to execute ICC arrest warrants. We cannot accept these insinuations at face value. Let us remember that the North-South peace pact has already mandated the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers in Sudan. If the government of Sudan is unperturbed by the first deployment, why should it be concerned about the second? The vital difference this time is that UN peacekeepers in Darfur would shore up the efforts of a weakened African Union force—and create a context in which there would be much less room to maneuver for those intent on continuing the war. In fact, Sudanese leaders know very well that the key to avoiding trials in The Hague is entirely in their hands. If fair and effective prosecutions of those most responsible for international crimes are commenced in Sudan, the ICC can halt its work. A basic principle of the ICC process is that genuine prosecutions at the national level will trump prosecutions abroad. What Darfurians therefore need from the international community is not compromise on the ICC. We need you to encourage a sustainable peace process and an agreement to which all parties can assent. We need to see you support the deployment of more international troops to Darfur and to Chad, backed up by sufficient resources and a clear mandate to protect civilians. Finally, the voices of ordinary Darfurians demanding justice must be heard. We want to see the international community supporting the ICC process. Any attempt to sacrifice justice not only validates the false dichotomy between peace and justice but undermines the potential for a sustainable end to the crisis. Mr. Osman is a lawyer who has defended and given free legal aid to hundreds of victims of human rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan. He received the Human Rights Watch’s highest award on November 8, 2006. Copyright 2007 The Nation

Quote: Past debates on intervention have tended to proceed as if intervention and state sovereignty were inherently contradictory and irreconcilable concepts — with support for one necessarily coming at the expense of the other. But in the course of our consultations this Commission has found less tension between these principles than we expected. We found broad willingness to accept the idea that the responsibility to protect its people from killing and other grave harm was the most basic and fundamental of all the responsibilities that sovereignty imposes — and that if a state cannot or will not protect its people from such harm, then coercive intervention for human protection purposes, including ultimately military intervention, by others in the international community may be warranted in extreme cases. We found broad support, in other words, for the core principle identified in this report, the idea of the responsibility to protect.

Quote: Doha Debates vote goes against Bashir Ahmed Hussain Adam, Hani Shukrallah, Tim Sebastian, Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani and Roland Marchal at the debate last night By Peter Townson The motion “This house believes that the Arab states should hand over the Sudanese president to the International Criminal Court (ICC)” was passed by 55% to 45% during the latest episode of the Doha Debates last night, where deep differences in political and public opinion were aired in a lively discussion. First to speak for the motion was the spokesman for JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) in Darfur, Ahmed Hussain Adam, who announced that he was “strongly in favour of the motion,” claiming that “Sudan would be a better place if Bashir was taken to trial.” “This is the only way to fight impunity and give a strong message to other dictators that violations of human rights will not be tolerated,” he argued, adding “we cannot let people kill in the name of national sovereignty.” Responding to the claim that peace talks would be affected by his arrest, Adam said peace talks had already been suspended after Bashir violated the terms of the agreement signed in Doha. “How could the people respect us if we talk to him whilst they are being killed in Darfur?” he added. First to speak against the motion was Roland Marchal, an expert on Sudan and the Horn of Africa and research fellow at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research. He argued that the Arab states should not hand over Bashir at the current time because of the lack of expertise of the ICC, the timing of its intervention and the fact that the ICC seemed only to respond to complaints about African countries. “The ICC could play some role in transitional justice after the conflict has been resolved, but now is not the appropriate moment for intervention,” he argued, saying 13 NGOs had been expelled from Darfur and activists and journalists throughout the country were now being threatened and arrested in attempts to protect the president. He was followed by Egyptian journalist Hani Shukrallah, the head of the Heikal Foundation for Arab Journalism, who cited reasons why Arab states should hand over the Sudanese president. Firstly, he said that “the Arab world is obliged to make amends and atone for standing by and watching the people of Darfur suffer expulsion, rape, murder and other atrocities and simply turning their backs.” Then he argued that the double standards being applied by the Arab states on the subject of war crimes gave them little credibility when requesting international action against Israel. The final speaker was the Sudanese politician and former adviser to the president on political affairs and peace, Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani who gave three arguments as to why Bashir should not be handed to the ICC. “This is a very weak case, with flimsy evidence – the prosecutor never even set foot in Darfur and had to rely on others testimonies,” he gave as his first argument, with the second being that “the ICC is an instrument of politics rather than justice.” His third argument was that the “guardian of peace” according to the current peace process was the president, and his arrest would derail the country’s peace efforts. As most of the audience members’ questions and comments during the lively debate were directed towards the supporters of the motion, the end result proved a surprise. Speaking after the result, Shukrallah said he was very surprised as “this is a very unpopular cause to oppose at the moment” because of its connotations to Arab nationalism.

Quote: Bashir warrant stirs up Doha Debates Web posted at: 4/28/2009 1:59:59 Source ::: The PENINSULA / BY MOHAMMED IQBAL DOHA: While Arab public opinion remains divided over the controversial arrest warrant issued against Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, a majority of the participants in Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates yesterday supported the warrant, saying the Arab states should hand over Bashir to the International Criminal Court. The motion supporting this argument was carried with 55 percent votes, against the 45 percent who voted against the resolution. The panelists supporting the motion were Ahmed Hussain Adam, official spokesman of the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the main political and military groups in Darfur, and Hani Shukrallah, head of the Heikal Foundation for Arab journalism. Dr Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani, Sudanese politician and former adviser to President Al Bashir, and Roland Marshal, senior research fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, spoke against the motion. Tim Sebastian chaired the debate. Ahmed Hussain opened the debate by saying that Al Bashir should be brought before the ICC for the good of the Sudanese people and the whole world. “Sudan will be a better place without Bashir. Those who commit war crimes should be held accountable for their acts and should be tried in the court of law,” said Hussain. Marshal argued that the ICC had lost its legitimacy. “In the past, its functioning was based on cooperation, but today it is based on cohesion,” said Marshal. He said the ICC had been singling out African regimes in its indictments for alleged war crimes. He also pointed out that the complexity of the conflict in Sudan necessitates careful investigation and the onus cannot be put solely on Al Bashir. Hani Shukrallah urged the Arabs to fight the double standards “in their own backyard” while criticising western double standards. “When we say that Israeli leaders should be declared war criminals for the atrocities committed in Gaza, we should apply similar standards to regimes in the Arab world as well,” he said. Atabani opposed the charges against Al Bashir, saying they were based on “flimsy evidence” and “dubious testimonies”. “ICC never went to Sudan or Darfur to collect evidence. Besides, it has been seen as an instrument of politics rather than justice,” he said. The very fact that the case was referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council, which is the most politicised international body in the world, shows that it cannot remain impartial, added Atabani. Those who opposed the motion argued that handing over Al Bashir to the ICC would jeopardise the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Darfur in which he played a key role. Such a move might escalate tensions in Sudan, they argued. The other side maintained that a president like Al Bashir, “who kills his own people”, must be brought before international law. The debate was followed by a lively question-answer session.