Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
Inside Geneva
Books to make you think 2025: Are Human Rights Being Ripped Away?
On Inside Geneva this week, we take a step back from the breaking news and talk to the authors of two books about the better side of humanity.
“The defence of human rights is not a matter of holding a candle and singing Kumbaya. The defence of human rights is about playing hardball. It's about putting pressure on governments, making them realise that repression isn't paying because the consequences are so severe,” says Kenneth Roth, author of Righting Wrongs.
Those consequences apply to violations of the laws of war – laws that are much stricter than you might think.
“One can speak about the leaders of a war of aggression as having individual criminal responsibility. If it’s illegal for the leader, maybe it’s illegal also for the soldiers who participate in it. And maybe it’s a violation not just to kill civilians on the other side, but Ukrainian soldiers,” continues Andrew Clapham, author of War.
Defending human rights doesn’t always make you popular.
“I made sure that Human Rights Watch was bringing facts to the table that the governments didn’t know. That was part of my job. My father fled the Nazis as a young boy. I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. So I feel a certain responsibility to take on not just the duty of criticising Israeli abuses, but also to address the misuse of anti-Semitism,” says Roth.
And while some governments are pushing back, international law is robust.
“You might think that by changing the lawyers or creating facts on the ground, you’re going to get away with it. But those war crimes allegations stick to you for life. There’s no statute of limitations on war crimes, and you could easily find yourself prosecuted in ten or 20 years’ time,” says Clapham.
Join host Imogen Foulkes for in-depth interviews on two thought-provoking books.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Foulkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 1:In today's program, the defense of human rights is not a matter of holding a candle and singing Kumbaya. The defense of human rights is not a matter of holding a candle and singing kumbaya. The defense of human rights is about playing hardball. It's about putting pressure on governments, making them realize that repression isn't paying because the consequences are so severe.
Speaker 3:The only time you can use force is if you're responding to an armed attack, and even then it doesn't create the idea that you then enter a state of war. You're only entitled to do what is necessary and proportionate to repel that attack.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen F, and it's one short week since our last episode, when we talked about Washington's bilateral talks with Moscow over the future of Ukraine, talks to which Ukraine and Europe were not invited. A lot has happened since then, and I bet many of our listeners have been glued to the news following every often disappointing and sometimes frightening development. So today we're going to take a little step back from the headlines and hear about two books which reflect some of the better parts of our common humanity. We'll hear from Ken Roth, who led Human Rights Watch for three decades and whose new book Writing Wrongs gives us an inside look into how to defend human rights, even though it sometimes means offending governments.
Speaker 1:I made sure that Human Rights Watch was bringing facts to the table that the governments didn't know. That was part of my job. My father fled the Nazis as a young boy. He lived in Germany and fled in July 1938 to New York. I grew up Jewish, I am Jewish, so the idea that I'm anti-Semitic is ridiculous, and I feel, as a result, a certain responsibility to take on not just the duty of criticizing Israeli abuses, but also to take on the misuse of anti-Semitism.
Speaker 2:Then later we talked to Andrew Clapham, professor of international law at Geneva's Graduate Institute, whose book simply called War has just won the prestigious Paul Reuter Prize for outstanding contributions to the study of international law. His explanations of what's allowed and not allowed in wartime may surprise you.
Speaker 3:One can speak about the leaders of the war of aggression as having individual criminal responsibility. And the book starts to question well, if it's illegal for the leader, maybe it's illegal also for the soldiers who participate in it. And maybe it's a violation not just to kill civilians on the other side but Ukrainian soldiers.
Speaker 2:But first we'll talk to Ken Roth, who I caught up with when he was visiting Geneva last week.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to write just a traditional memoir. I wanted, with this book, to take on the people who look at human rights activists and say, oh, isn't that nice. You know, I stand for human rights too, but you can't really get anything done, can you? And I wanted to show the skeptics that, in fact, the defense of human rights is not a matter of holding a candle and singing Kumbaya, that the defense of human rights is about playing hardball to use in Americanism. It's about putting pressure on governments and forcing them to change the cost-benefit analysis of repression, making them realize that repression isn't paying because the consequences are so severe. And I run through example after example in the book and I want the reader to end by seeing oh, my goodness, you can get things done.
Speaker 2:One of the cases towards the beginning of the book that really struck a chord with me was writing about Syria, and that's because I reported on every single UN Commission of Inquiry report on Syria. I read them all, which is, as you can imagine, it's pretty harrowing, but I did think there's nothing to stop this lot. They don't care. And yet you found ways to try and get some pressure exerted on Syria. Tell me about that.
Speaker 1:Well, I deliberately opened the book with Syria, and I obviously wrote this before Assad was toppled. I chose Syria precisely because it was such a difficult case, because Assad was so despicable he did everything imaginable to his people that this was a man who was beyond shaming, and one of the major tools of the human rights movement is to shame governments. Most governments, at least, pretend to respect human rights when the human rights movement can show that they fall short. That is stigmatizing and ultimately delegitimizing, which is why governments hate it so much. But in the case of Syria's Assad, he essentially had no reputation left to lose, and so we had to figure out how do you make a difference, and the main strategy we pursued was to target Vladimir Putin, because at that stage, he still cared about his reputation. This was before Ukraine, and we knew that the Assad government would fall in two seconds if the Russian government withdrew its military. So Putin had leverage on Assad, and we felt that we had leverage on Putin if we could highlight the right issues. But I opened the book with the Russian-Syria military campaign in Idlib, the northwestern part of Syria, which at the stage, was the only area still held by the armed opposition, where principally Russian bombers, but also Syrian, were deliberately targeting hospitals, schools, marketplaces, apartment buildings, doing everything they could to drive out the civilians, with the hope that it would then be easier to retake the territory on the ground. And Human Rights Watch carefully documented those war crimes, as did institutions like the UN Commission of Inquiry, and we used that information to then generate pressure on Putin, and this was during the early days of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1:So we couldn't rely on the US government and we decided to focus on the French, german and Turkish governments. So I personally met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with French President Emmanuel Macron. I repeatedly visited Ankara and spoke with senior officials in Erdogan's government, and over the course of two to three years, we gradually persuaded them to put sufficient pressure on Putin that, as of March 2020, the bombing stopped, and it stayed stopped completely. For about three years it picked up a little bit, but in essence, it never resumed at anywhere near the same level until finally the rebel group that was operating in Idlib overthrew Assad, and now no one's getting bombed. And so this you know. I thought it was a good illustration, because it showed the power of the information, but also the necessity of deploying that information with influential, potentially allied governments who could make a difference. And with the right strategy, in this case focusing on Putin, we were able to stop the bombing of civilians in Italy.
Speaker 2:Something else that struck me and which maybe lots of people who think they know about human rights work. It would not occur to them. You talk about going to the World Economic Forum in Davos. You talk about going to the Munich Security Conference. Do you really have leverage at these kinds of venues? Well, take the Munich Security Conference, which is really have leverage at these kinds of venues?
Speaker 1:Well, take the Munich Security Conference, which is a funny conference because it collects the defense ministers and foreign ministers, and often prime ministers and presidents of all of the leading Western governments, as well as a smattering of others, and puts them in this relatively small ballroom of a very old hotel in Munich and they are together for two days.
Speaker 1:And I have to say, the Munich Security Conference treated me well because at various stages they put me on the stage, including at one key moment with Syria, where they gave me 10 minutes of a plenary talk to the entire audience. And I found you know Munich as well as the World Economic Forum useful because it was so easy in those settings to speak to heads of state and relevant ministers. You know, once you're in the door you're deemed okay. And I made sure that Human Rights Watch was bringing facts to the table that the governments didn't know, but also that we were bringing strategies that they didn't necessarily think of and we were ultimately seen as value-added. And so, although it may seem odd for me to go from speaking with victims of human rights abuse in some country to one of these highfalutin conferences, but that was part of my job. It was to really translate the reality on the ground to people in influential capitals that could help us make a difference to stop human rights violations.
Speaker 2:You have annoyed particular governments. China doesn't want to see you anymore, russia doesn't want to see you anymore. Russia doesn't want to see you anymore, but particularly Israel, because of human rights watches, examination and critical view of human rights in the occupied territories and so on. They've accused you even of anti-Semitism, and you're Jewish yourself. Does that upset you? Well, you're of anti-Semitism, and you're Jewish yourself. Does that upset you?
Speaker 1:Well, you're right to single out Israel, because, while I've been personally sanctioned by the Chinese government and the Russian government, there is no country out there that has as dedicated a group of activists to defend Israel, to criticize any critic, to try to pretend that Israel does no wrong, and the critics are all anti-Semitic and biased. Israel stands alone in that respect. Now I have been accused of anti-Semitism. That's almost a standard slur that is sent for anybody who criticizes Israel. Now, I personally don't let it bother me because it's just so ridiculous. I mean, my father fled the Nazis, you know, as a young boy. He lived in Germany and fled in July 1938 to New York. I grew up Jewish, I am Jewish, you know. So the idea that I'm anti-Semitic is ridiculous and I feel, as a result, a certain responsibility to take on, you know, not just the duty of criticizing Israeli abuses, but also to take on the misuse of anti-Semitism. Because this is a very cynical approach that the defenders of the Israeli government use, in that if anti-Semitism is a serious problem around the world, jews face anti-Semitism around the world, but if charges of anti-Semitism are understood to be just an excuse to defend Israel, that cheapens the concept of anti-Semitism. It leaves Jews less able to defend themselves from real instances of anti-Semitism.
Speaker 1:And so I have called that out repeatedly and in many ways, you know, I feel that it almost comes back to you know, first of all, the Israeli government strategy, which is they've kind of given up on Jews around the world to support them. You know, in the United States in particular, which is most important for these purposes, there are conservative groups like AIPAC. But most American Jews are liberal, they vote Democratic, they believe in rights. The Israeli government has given up on them and is largely banking on Christian evangelicals who view Israel as a prelude to the second coming of Christ, at which point the Jews who don't convert will presumably go to hell. So you know this is a very cynical strategy.
Speaker 1:It also, I think, reflects very different understandings of the Holocaust, because the Israeli government's view of the Holocaust is that Jews were slaughtered because they were weak, because they didn't have a state of their own, and there is some truth to that. But the Israeli government has decided then to defend that state, not just through legitimate means but through atrocities, you know, by being the toughest guy on the block, even if that means war crimes and crimes against humanity and, arguably genocide. I take a very different lesson from the Holocaust, which is that Jews were also persecuted because human rights standards were so weak and that what we need to do is to build up human rights standards to make mass atrocities unthinkable. But you can't do that if there's a Palestinian exception to human rights, because if Palestinians are exempted today, jews will be exempted tomorrow.
Speaker 2:How do you think the rest of us are doing on this? No exceptions to human rights, I mean. Obviously events are moving very fast. They may change again before even this podcast goes out, but we are seeing some pretty for me anyway dismaying attacks on what I thought were our fundamental rights and principles.
Speaker 1:Well, the most outrageous thing that has happened, you know, since the ceasefire, is Trump's call for mass forced deportation of two million Palestinians from Gaza. You know this would be a blatant war crime, arguably a crime against humanity. The fact that he would propose this suggests an utter indifference to international human rights norms, and that's deeply troubling.
Speaker 2:We're moving that way, aren't we, though? With Ukraine as well, you know, it now seems that the future of a sovereign country is going to be decided without the sovereign country in the room, I mean.
Speaker 1:Trump is being quite outrageous by proposing to negotiate with Putin one-on-one, without Ukraine and without Europe, whose security is very much at stake, and he clearly, you know, has this view of himself as a master negotiator. In fact, we realize that he can be quite naive. It'll be easy for Putin to lie to him, it'll be easy for Putin to flatter him, to stroke his ego to, you know, to play games with him that Trump is very susceptible to, and so I worry that Trump will give away the store.
Speaker 2:In your book and obviously a good part of it was written probably before the November election, before the ceasefire in Gaza, before this supposed deal making over the future of Ukraine. But you say you see China as the biggest threat to rights, fundamental freedoms. Do you still feel like that, or do you think those threats are coming at us from every angle now, including the United States?
Speaker 1:The reason I single out China as the greatest threat to human rights is that many governments violate human rights. That's not that unusual. China violates human rights. Is that many governments violate human rights? You know, that's not that unusual. China violates human rights in a big way, particularly if you look at the treatment of the Uyghurs, where it detained a million of them, essentially trying to force them to abandon their religion, their culture and their language and become, you know, chinese Communist Party Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese. But what makes China dangerous is that it has the world's second largest economy and it is devoting seemingly infinite resources to not simply silencing critics of China's repression but also trying to rewrite what international human rights law is all about. And if you look at what Xi Jinping and Chinese diplomats say, they would reduce the very detailed, complex human rights treaties to, in essence, three things If they are expanding GDP per capita, if they are providing security and if they're keeping people happy and obviously security and happiness are imposed, and so it really comes down to can they keep the economy growing?
Speaker 1:Now, xi Jinping is having a hard time doing that because he's so intent on control, but I think we have to focus on what a radical effort it is to reduce human rights to just. Is the economy growing? It should be no surprise that China rejects civil and political rights because it doesn't dare hold an election, it doesn't allow free press, it doesn't allow civic groups or free association, and that's why he wants to, in a sense, dumb human rights down to just. Are you growing the economy? That is a radical proposition. It basically rips up the human rights down to just. Are you growing the economy? That is a radical proposition. It basically rips up the human rights treaties. We have nothing, if that's all there is.
Speaker 2:So you still feel China is the biggest threat? I mean, we're just fresh from the US Vice President JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference, where I mean people were flabbergasted. He talked about the biggest threat to Europe was the enemy from within. Yet his concept of free speech I mean America is banning books right now.
Speaker 1:So this shows, you know, where his top priority is. Ironically, you know he said this the day after visiting Dachau, the concentration camp just outside of Munich. So he knows full well the horror that Germany is trying to ensure never comes back. And he basically says don't worry about that. We want to stop migration. And this, you know, is indicative of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1:I don't think JD Vance was saying this you know because he wrote it on the plane. This was a vetted speech was saying this, you know because he wrote it on the plane, this was a vetted speech. And the Trump administration essentially is saying you know our values, which is stopping migration, which is stopping DEI, which is, you know, attacking gays, which is trying to put women back in their traditional place. That's more important than any of this worry about democracy or, you know, or the possible revival of mass atrocities. And it's a very short-term memory and it's one where the US doesn't have the experience within people's lifetimes of having lived through the horrors of the Second World War. So this, sadly, is the leadership of the United States today. It is a threat to human rights.
Speaker 2:We started this interview thinking, saying that perhaps your book was a toolkit for human rights defenders and trying to uphold standards around the world. Do you think there's hope? I mean, people feel very, very concerned right now that the kind of things we thought we'd put in place after 1945 are being ripped away also by countries we thought were allies.
Speaker 1:frankly, this is obviously a difficult time, but I don't think we should overstate it. We've lived through a prior Trump administration and one thing I note in the book is that other governments stepped up. You know Trump withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council and other governments stepped in, and that was a positive movement. You know I talked about what we were able to do on.
Speaker 1:Idlib withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council and other governments stepped in, and that was a positive movement. You know I talked about what we were able to do on Idlib. You know, tiny Iceland, which replaced the United States on the Human Rights Council, led the effort to condemn the former Philippine President Duterte for his summary execution of supposed drug dealers. So we still got a lot done despite the absence of the United States. The other point I want to make is that there's much talk of this global contest between autocracy and democracy and certainly with Trump's arrival it looks like the autocrats have had a big boost. But when you look around the world, the people who live under autocracy or are threatened with autocracy have shown time and time again that they stand for accountable government. They want democracy and if you look at just the large numbers of demonstrations they've been in Hong Kong, in Thailand, in Myanmar, iran, belarus, russia, uganda, nicaragua, cuba I mean you can go around the world, russia.
Speaker 3:Uganda.
Speaker 1:Nicaragua, cuba, I mean you can go around the world, and when people are living under autocracy, they are willing to stand for democracy, even if it shows you know, even if they risk being arrested or shot. So I don't think that's surprising, because when you look at how autocrats rule, they rule for themselves, they don't rule for the people, and we see this over and over, including the most prominent examples of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Where the challenge does present itself today is in the more established democracies, where they are not adequately delivering to all members of their society. With the result, the people who feel left behind, who feel that they're not being served by the government, they're not even being respected by the government, have become ripe for the far right, the autocratic appeal, and so I think an important challenge for the Western democracies is to improve their own governance as the best way to fend off the autocratic threat at home, and then to do what they can to help people in other countries who clearly do want to avoid autocracy themselves.
Speaker 2:Ken Roth there on his new book Writing Wrongs and his long career as a human rights defender. Just before we go to our next interview with international law professor Andrew Clapham, here's a heads up that next time, on Inside Geneva, we'll be returning to the topic of artificial intelligence, social media, the big tech industry and the defence of democracy. We explored that almost exactly a year ago in the big election year of 2024. In just 12 months, things have developed not necessarily in a good way, with some social media platforms becoming vehicles for misinformation and hate speech. What can we do to protect ourselves and our democratic systems? Join us with Expert Insight on March 18th. And if you're a podcast fan and looking for more to listen to, here's some news about a new podcast series from.
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Speaker 2:That does sound pretty interesting. Do join Angela Saini with Lost Cells. Now, it's an old saying, but it turns out a wrong one that all is fair in love and war. In fact, we have strict rules about how we're allowed to wage war. Though at the moment it's not clear, those rules are very often respected. Professor Andrew Clapham has written a fascinating book called Simply War, examining exactly what those rules are and how they are being tested.
Speaker 3:I started noticing that people were using the concept of war to do all kinds of things, as if it automatically justified your action just by calling something a war, and I thought I should dig down a bit and see if war really did give you rights in the way that people were suggesting give you rights in the way that people were suggesting.
Speaker 2:Is it your idea, then, that people are bending the laws of war or just using the word war to do things that don't fit in the rules? Or are we more civilized, since these rules were introduced mostly after the Second World War?
Speaker 3:I definitely don't think we're particularly more civilized now.
Speaker 3:I think atomic weapons and mass destruction of cities, that's not more civilized.
Speaker 3:But to answer the bulk of your question, I think it's that people are reverting back to old ideas about war, which you can trace back millennia, to do things which today, as you say since 1945, are no longer appropriate. So wars have been around for a long time and the law of chivalry and the laws of war have been around, and indeed in the past if two princes or two states had a quarrel they would settle it through a war and you were entitled to do all kinds of things. But since the UN and since the Geneva Conventions you're no longer entitled to do those things. But still you find people saying oh, but I've captured these people, they're law of war detainees, I can do this or I can bomb that because it's enemy property and I can do whatever I want with enemy property. But those are old ideas from almost medieval times and I was really challenging states to admit that in the post-second world World War era some of these things are no longer appropriate Blockade, siege, ransoming prisoners and so on. It's not appropriate anymore.
Speaker 2:When is it legal, then, to actually have a war? Because, reading your book, I'm coming to the conclusion that you think under the modern laws of war, it's illegal to start a war.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it is. Yes, it's interesting. The Charter doesn't even use the word war like that. It says it's illegal to use or threaten the use of force, if you like. They abolished the idea of war and they said that the only time you can use force is if you're responding to an armed attack. And even then it doesn't create the idea that you then enter a state of war. You're only entitled to do what is necessary and proportionate to repel that attack. So the whole institution of war is, in my view, no longer appropriate. Even though we continue to use it day after day and politicians continue to use it as if it entitles them to do things, people suggest that things can be destroyed because it's a war, and that's no longer appropriate. You have to only use as much force as is necessary to repel the attacker.
Speaker 2:So it's illegal to start an aggressive war. That makes Russia's invasion of Ukraine illegal.
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Speaker 3:And I think what's particularly interesting now is that we even have the crime of aggression, so one can speak about the leaders and the instigators of the war of aggression as having individual criminal responsibility.
Speaker 3:So it's not just illegal for the state to do it, but it's illegal for individuals to command their forces to do it. And the book starts to question well, if it's illegal for the leader, maybe it's illegal also for the soldiers who participate in it and maybe it's a violation not just to kill civilians on the other side but Ukrainian soldiers civilians on the other side but Ukrainian soldiers. Now that's a very radical idea because historically you think in war soldiers kill other soldiers and there's nothing wrong with that. But we now have something called human rights law and there is a complaint ongoing now before the UN Human Rights Committee here in Geneva by the families of Ukrainian soldiers to say those lives were taken in a war of aggression and therefore it's a violation of the right to life. Now that's a very modern, radical way of thinking about human rights that if you start a war of aggression and you kill soldiers on the other side, you've taken away their human right to life and we'll have to see what the UN Human Rights Committee says.
Speaker 2:It's really fascinating. It's kind of upending my view of war as well, because I mean, if you conclude that claiming you're at war doesn't give you the right to kill people or destroy things or take land or property, well that's what war is.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think that's why, after the Second World War, war was abolished I mean it was decided that this is not a good way to resolve disputes it was accepted that in some exceptional circumstances, if you've been attacked you might have to use force to repel the attacker. But the idea that two states and two peoples go to war and the other side become all the enemy and you can keep what you seize from the other side because that's the spoils or booty of war, that idea I think should be abolished. It hasn't yet been abolished. In all the books there's still this underlying idea that if there's a major naval warfare you can seize enemy goods on the high seas and keep it as prize. But that's an old idea from the era of pirates. We shouldn't be continuing to buttress the idea of war in this way. We should accept that the institution of war has been abolished.
Speaker 2:I want to come back to that idea of seizing property on the high seas or wherever in a moment. But we're here in Geneva, obviously, the International Committee of the Red Cross is here. It's the guardian of the Geneva Conventions. They don't say war is actually abolished, it's basically illegal if it's waged. They just say even war has rules.
Speaker 3:You're right. But that's not because they believe that war hasn't been abolished in the way I've been describing it. It's because they have a limited mandate. So they choose to focus on the victims of war and not the causes of war and not who is guilty for starting the war. Because under their logic they would say, if we start to say who was guilty of starting this war and who has committed the crime of aggression, then that side won't work with us anymore. They'll say we're biased and we won't get access to any prisoners that they hold. So they say to both sides look, you've started a war. We're not interested in who started it and who's in the right and who's in the wrong, just give us access to the victims of war.
Speaker 2:OK, let's come back to this concept of seizing property. I'm assuming you'll also mean territory with this, because we're looking at two conflicts at the moment One is Gaza and one is Ukraine, and in both of them there do appear to be victors' spoils, if you like, against the will of the inhabitants. It's being couched, as certainly by President Trump, as a way to get peace, but even if people signed on to this, would these deals be illegal in your book?
Speaker 3:They would be in my book and I think they would be in the book of international law. And you're right that this is one of the points of the book. It says you cannot seize and acquire territory through war. That was decided after the Second World War. Of course you could do it before and that's how a lot of states did acquire territory through war. That was decided after the Second World War. Of course you could do it before and that's how a lot of states did acquire territory.
Speaker 3:But the UN General Assembly has been quite clear explicitly since 1970 that you cannot acquire territory through the use of force.
Speaker 3:So even a deal which gave Russia this bit of territory, unless it is accepted by the Ukrainians under no form of duress, is illegal in the sense that you cannot recognise that territory that's been seized. So the Security Council has said in the past that states must not recognise territory which has sought to be acquired. So as a matter of international law, the title of the territory doesn't pass. Somebody could say it's now mine and they could be there, but it doesn't belong to them. So an attempt to acquire bits of Gaza or an attempt to acquire bits of Ukraine cannot work as a matter of international law, because we no longer accept that you can seize and keep things through the law of war which you could in the past, through the law of war which you could in the past. That was one of the points of going to war was to expand your territory, but since the Second World War it was decided by the whole world. That was a bad idea.
Speaker 2:Let's turn back to what if there is a war and sadly there will be wars what armies think they can do? What armies think they can do Now we know that the British Army, the French, the Germans, the Americans, they have lawyers, they have classes on the Geneva Conventions, their soldiers are all supposed to be instructed in that. We have heard that the new US Defence Secretary, pete Hegseth, has fired the US Army's military advisers, their lawyers. Does that give you a bit of an uncomfortable feeling? He says he wants a new warrior ethos or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think it's disastrous. I mean, it's true that all these major armies have legal advisers who advise what is legal and what is not and, most importantly, they will be involved in issues of military discipline. So a breach of the military code or the commission of a war crime under international law would be in their department and they might be in charge of prosecuting. And the idea that somehow the Geneva Conventions or the international law related to war crimes is too generous to those it seeks to protect and therefore one needs to change the lawyers and ensure that people will not prosecute you. It is a disaster because in all of these campaigns there have been civilians who have been killed, there have been disproportionate attacks, there have been mistreatment of prisoners and from time to time there are some prosecutions, and that makes people feel uncomfortable and angry. To time there are some prosecutions and that makes people feel uncomfortable and angry, but the number of prosecutions that there are is pretty small and the idea that that can't be tolerated makes me very, very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:We live in a very, very unstable world right now and it seems to get worse by the day. Four military leaders who are all locked in deep, deep meetings and concerns at the moment across Europe United States, russia, ukraine. What lessons should they take from your book? People who are thinking of putting soldiers into the field or thinking they might have to?
Speaker 3:I think they should realise that you can't acquire territory through the use of force, even if it looks, as you put it before, as though you can assume that by putting boots on the ground and looking as though you've acquired it, the legal title does not pass. It doesn't become yours. I think they should also be aware that the law of war crimes is not just about what your own lawyers are prepared to tell you not to do. It's international law, and when you travel abroad you risk being arrested and prosecuted, even if your own side doesn't want to deal with it. There are prosecutors now around the world who are prosecuting people using what's known as universal jurisdiction.
Speaker 3:I've just come back from watching a war crimes trial in Sweden where a Swiss national and a Swedish national are being prosecuted for complicity in war crimes in Sudan because of the way in which their company got involved, allegedly, with the government of Sudan and its repression of the militias in the area of the oil fields. I don't think when they were operating in Sudan it ever occurred to them that they could be prosecuted for war crimes, and I think it doesn't occur to a lot of Western military or Russian military that they can be prosecuted for war crimes. But one day they will be travelling in Switzerland or the south of France or Great Britain and they will find themselves arrested and prosecuted for war crimes. So you can think that by changing the lawyers or creating facts on the ground that you're going to get away with it. But those war crimes, allegations, they stick to you for life. There's no statute of limitation on war crimes and you could easily find yourself prosecuted in 10 or 20 years' time.
Speaker 2:Andrew Clapham, with some wise words of warning to those who are or who are tempted to violate the laws of war. That brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. We hope you enjoyed this episode. My thanks to both Andrew and Ken Roth for their time. Writing Wrongs is published by Penguin Random House and War is from Oxford University Press and it's also available open source Reminder. You've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can email us on insidegeneva at swissinfoch and subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.
