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Abstract

The recent activity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague con- cerning the case of President Omar al-Bashir and the crisis in Darfur has set off a firestorm of commentary amongst international lawyers, human rights activists, genocide scholars, experts on Sudan, and journalists, among others. Some argue that the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, was correct in charging al-Bashir with genocide and crimes against humanity; others believe that he had little to no grounds for doing so. Furthermore, while some see the prosecutor’s charges of geno- cide as questionable, at best, and highly counterproductive, if not dangerous, at worst, others see the genocide charge as positive and a move toward ending impu- nity for genocide. The same is largely true of the arrest warrant that the ICC has issued for President al-Bashir’s arrest. Dr. Alex de Waal, an Oxford-trained social anthropologist, a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, and the director of Justice Africa in London; and Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, a Yale Uni- versity-educated lawyer and University of Chicago-trained cultural anthropologist, professor of Genocide Studies and Prevention at George Mason University, presi- dent of Genocide Watch, and immediate past president of the International Asso- ciation of Genocide Scholars, kindly accepted GSP editor Samuel Totten’s invita- tion to debate the merits and demerits of the prosecutor’s charges and the ICC’s issuance of the warrant.

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