TheProgressivePatriot
Gold Member
On top of all of the other agregious transgessions -domestic and foreign- by the Orange Ogre and his band of demented minions, we now have this.
Trump’s White House Decides War Crimes Don’t Matter, Shuts Accountability Office Down
More on the Office of Global Criminal Justice
Obviously, none of this is a priority to the criminal gange in the White House.
Trump’s White House Decides War Crimes Don’t Matter, Shuts Accountability Office Down
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, America’s top diplomat, has wanted to do a bit of reorganizing in the State Department for quite some time now in order to focus on top priorities, such as finding new economic opportunities for American businesses and strengthening the US military prowess. Now it looks like he is going to achieve his goal, just at the expense of programs to promote human rights and fight world poverty.
Tillerson is apparently closing the Office of Global Criminal Justice, reassigning Todd Buchwald, the office’s special coordinator since December, 2015, and a career State Department lawyer, to a position in the State Department’s office of legal affairs
One person who clearly doesn’t approve of the possible shuttering of the office is David Scheffer, a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, who also served as the first U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.
“This is a very harsh signal to the rest of the world that the United States is essentially downgrading the importance of accountability for the commission of atrocity crimes,” Scheffer said. “This sends a strong signal to perpetrators of mass atrocities that the United States is not watching you anymore.”
The Office Of Global Criminal Justice was first established by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 1997 to raise the importance of confronting mass murder in U.S. foreign policy, largely in response to the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, creating the post of Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues along the way. Over the following two decades, the office joined forces with several international criminal courts in an attempt to bring justice, not only to Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, but also to Cambodia and the Central African Republic. Furthermore, the office lobbied for greater U.S. support for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
More on the Office of Global Criminal Justice
The Office of Global Criminal Justice, headed by Todd F. Buchwald, advises the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. In particular, the Office helps formulate U.S. policy on the prevention of, responses to, and accountability for mass atrocities. To this end, the Office advises U.S. Government and foreign governments on the appropriate use of a wide range of transitional justice mechanisms, including truth and reconciliation commissions, lustrations, and reparations, in addition to judicial processes. Office of Global Criminal Justice
Obviously, none of this is a priority to the criminal gange in the White House.