August 9, 2007
Michelle Tanyhill, a philosophy and psychology senior, has had an interest in women’s rights since she started her first year of classes at Rollins College. This summer, Tanyhill put her interests into practical real-world research. She worked to strengthen women’s rights on a global scale. Tanyhill teamed up with Assistant Professor of Philosophy Eric Smaw on a mission to urge the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute all forms of discrimination against women as crimes against humanity.
Their research is part of the Student-Faculty Summer Scholarship Program, which gives students the opportunity to work with a faculty member on research within the professor’s field. Tanyhill has a two-fold research project. This summer she wrote a paper concerning discrimination against women and the ICC. In the fall, she will begin writing a longer paper for her honors thesis project. The longer paper will extend much of the research that she’s done over the summer. In short, it offers a justification for why the ICC is needed.
The International Criminal Court was established in 1998 in response to the need for a permanent court to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Following WWII, the Nuremburg trials were employed to prosecute officials who were responsible for various war crimes, however these trials were only ad hoc. The ICC is a court of last resort, and it prosecutes cases that the country of the accused will not – or cannot – prosecute.
While participation in the court is voluntary, the ICC has universal jurisdiction, so any country in the world can be prosecuted even if they are not members of the ICC. This marks a significant difference between the ICC and other international courts. For example, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) only adjudicates cases in which both parties have agreed to submit themselves to its determination. By contrast, the ICC can adjudicate a case in which the country of the accused is not a party to it.
With their research Tanyhill and Smaw hope to expand the types of cases the ICC adjudicates. Currently, the ICC prosecutes rape during war time as a war crime, and apartheid, a political system in which people of different races are separated as a crime against humanity. Tanyhill and Smaw want to prove that discrimination against women and other crimes, such as genital mutilation, involuntary sexual servitude and so on, are crimes against humanity, and the International Criminal Court should take on these types of cases because they are similar to those dealing with rape and apartheid.
“The ICC already prosecutes similar cases and we believe that we can build on that and prove that they should prosecute crimes against women as well,” Tanyhill said. “For instance, the ICC prosecutes apartheid so discriminating against a race or group of people who share similar physical characteristics should also be applied to discrimination on the basis of gender.”
Currently, Great Britain and Italy are members of the ICC while the U.S., North Korea, Israel and others are not. The U.S. originally signed up for the court to help design and create it, but it failed to ratify the Treaty and later, under the currently administration, it withdrew its signature. Tanyhill believes that the U.S. should be involved in the International Criminal Court because currently there is a double standard for the United States. The U.S. is able to prosecute officials from other countries but our own officials cannot be prosecuted for wrong doings. Tanyhill also believes that having the U.S. in the ICC would make the international human rights law stronger and it allow ethnic and religious differences to be resolved using the rule of law.
Tanyhill and Smaw have been working on the paper since February of 2007 and hope to finish in March of 2008. They plan to send the paper to foundations such as the Heritage Foundation, a conservative newspaper opposed to joining the ICC, in hopes of giving another perspective to help convince people to join. Tanyhill also hopes to create awareness about the ICC by submitting her paper to other publications, researching more, and hopefully gaining an internship with the court. She hopes to convince the executive to join the ICC and take cases dealing with discrimination against women.
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