ICJ to Decide on Hissene Habre's Case

Belgium has filed a case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to request Senegal to extradite the former president of Chad, Hissene Habre.

Hissene Habre is a former president of Chad from 1982 to 1990 before he was forced to step down by Idriss Deby. According to human rights activitis Habre was responsible for the killings and torture of thousands of people during his rule. After his fall, Habre went to live in Senegal and has stayed there ever since.

The first attempt to indict Mr. Habre was in the court of Senegal, but it was then ruled by the court that Mr. Habre cannot be tried there. The victims then went to Belgium who claims universal jurisdiction for international crimes (which covers genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity). In 2005, the Belgium court issued a ruling to arrest Mr. Habre for crimes against humanity. Since then, Belgium has been trying to extradite Mr. Habre from Senegal, but to no avail. The filing of the case to ICJ is the latest attempt by Belgium to bring Mr. Habre to justice. Belgium cites a duty for all states in the world in regards to international crimes to prosecute or to extradite alleged offender. Therefore, if Senegal does not want to prosecute Mr. Habre, it should extradite him to a country that will, which in this case is Belgium.

I find this case is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, because it represents a real test for the universal jurisdiction claimed by Belgium. If this succeeds, then it can set a precedent for other countries to follow Belgium's example, that is to claim universal jurisdiction for international crimes. If this happens then any country can put to trial anyone on international crimes charges, even if that person is a foreign citizen and does not reside in the country where the trial takes place. This will represent a major breakthrough for the fight against impunity for many international crimes.

Second, it represents a real test for ICJ to judge on human rights cases. There were cases on human rights put to ICJ before, but the quantity is not that great. Therefore this has the potential to set further precedents on human rights cases in ICJ, and I hope it will be a positive precedent.

Of course, one should not overestimate the impact of this case on the development of international human rights law. For one thing, ICJ's decisions are binding only to state parties involved. Also, there are only a limited numbers of states who recognized the jurisdiction of ICJ, which means the impact will be very limited. But despite that, I still think this will be an important precedent for human rights justice.