Tuesday Links. Including, of Course, NGOs and the ICC

Published July 28, 2009 @ 07:37AM PT

Travellering, so keeping this relatively short:

- A fascinating two-part series on the blog Making Sense of Darfur on Humanitarian aid and the International Criminal Court: Grounds for Divorce. Part two is here. The final paragraph is particularly thought-provoking:

"Nevertheless, NGOs’ infatuation with punitive justice and, more generally, the use of force – like military intervention in the name of the “responsibility to protect” – is puzzling. Foreign military intervention and the punishment of criminals are not necessarily the best ways to contain the violence of war. While politics of aid and mediation have many limitations, they also have their virtues. The job of humanitarian organizations, to my mind, is to foster the latter, and not to advocate for a global moral order based on judicial punishment and just war."

- Adam Hochschild writing in the New York Review of Books about Rape of the Congo. It's a brutal, searing read. For more information about rape as a weapon of war in Congo, see this resource page.

- And, finally, in the "Really? That's a surprise" category - the Khaleej Times cites a UN report that Saudi Arabia is the largest donor to humanitarian appeals, as measured by a percentage of GDP.

For more information on humanitarian and development funding - including the largest donors in overall and absolute terms, which countries receive the most aid, and what kind of activities donors prefer to fund - see here.

[Photo from the site Canada and the International Criminal Court at www.international.gc.ca.]

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Author

Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.