When Omar al-Bashir got on a plane and flew west to Chad a few weeks ago, human rights organizations everywhere clamored for his arrest.The Sudanese president is an international persona non grata, wanted in The Hague for genocide and war crimes in Darfur. He is believed to have participated in decisions that cost the lives of some 300,000 people and forced the displacement of an additional 2.7 million. Since becoming the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court last year, Bashir has frustrated efforts to bring him to justice. The visit to Chad was his first to a country that recognizes the ICC, prompting a commotion of voices calling for his detention.
But Chadian officials made clear that Bashir would be allowed to return home without a hassle.
"We are not obliged to arrest Omar Hassan al-Bashir," Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, the country's interior and security minister, told Reuters. "Bashir is a sitting president. I have never seen a sitting president arrested on his travels by the host country."
Not only did the Sudanese leader receive a red-carpet welcome in N'Djamena, President Idriss Deby presented him with a symbolic key to the city.
The warm reception was obviously a slap in the face of the ICC. But it was perhaps, more critically, a manifestation of a rift in the international community.
It's worth noting that the most vocal criticisms of Chad's decision not to arrest Bashir came from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – with headquarters in London and New York respectively – while all the ICC's open investigations – in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Darfur and the Republic of Kenya – relate to situations in Africa. It is hardly surprising, then, that the African Union has urged its members not to arrest Bashir.
In fact, the Arab League and the African Union have condemned the indictment as being counterproductive to "the unity and stability of Sudan," with African Union chairman Muammar al-Gadaffi describing it as "a form of terrorism" and an attempt by Western states "to recolonize their former colonies."
The Libyan president's hyperbolic style aside, there is considerable truth to the assertion that a vast majority of today's international institutions are dominated and influenced by Western ideas, values and interests. Indeed, Western hegemony is deeply ingrained in the post-war international order.
The five veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, for example, are the main victors of the Second World War or their successor states. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund operated for years on what was called the "Washington Consensus." And while the World Bank represents 186 countries, its president is always an American citizen, nominated by the President of the United States. The International Monetary Fund is based in Washington DC and its current managing director is French. Need I go on?
To be clear, it is certainly possible to understand why the post-war world relied so heavily on Western leadership, especially while many Asian and African colonies were emerging as independent states out of the ashes of empire. But that world system is quickly being reshaped. The new world order is one in which the distribution of power is shifting. As Newsweek columnist and CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria has predicted: "In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now — one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples."
George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown put it more emphatically in a 2008 column for The Sunday Times of London: "For the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a world not wholly dominated by the West," they wrote. "If we want to influence this environment rather than be held to ransom by it, and if we want to take hold of some of the worrying features of globalization, then real, practical multilateralism is a strategic necessity, not a liberal nicety."
In other words, international institutions – including those designed to promote human rights – must be truly representative if they are to carry the weight of legitimacy. The alternative is to let war criminals walk free.
