[2373] in peace2
Tearing up the Rules: The Illegality of Invading Iraq
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Zaki Wahhaj)
Wed Mar 19 06:06:09 2003
Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.2.20030319060723.01bbac60@hesiod>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 06:08:57 -0500
To: peace-announce@mit.edu
From: Zaki Wahhaj <zwahhaj@MIT.EDU>
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jacob Park [mailto:jpark@cesr.org]
Sent: 18 March 2003 21:05
To: Jacob Park
Subject: Tearing up the Rules: The Illegality of Invading Iraq
>>>please forward widely<<<
Dear Friends,
Last night, President Bush reminded the world that "one reason the U.N. was
founded after the Second World War was to confront aggressive dictators
actively and early before they can attack the innocent and destroy the peace."
Yet "attack the innocent and destroy the peace" is precisely what he now
intends to do.
A US-led invasion of Iraq will be unequivocally illegal under the UN
Charter and international law generally. A new report from the Center for
Economic and Social Rights, TEARING UP THE RULES: THE ILLEGALITY OF
INVADING IRAQ, rejects efforts by the U.S., U.K, and Australia to
circumvent the U.N. Security Council and claim legal justification for a
war against Iraq.
The report cites a range of authoritative legal sources to refute their
arguments, and warns that an illegal war in Iraq will threaten the pillars
of collective security established after World War II to protect civilians
from a recurrence of that unprecedented carnage. This is an attack on the
very institutions of international law and the United Nations, said CESR
board president Philip Alston, who directs the Center for Human Rights and
Global Justice Program at New York University. It opens the door for every
country to take the law into its own hands and launch preemptive military
strikes without any universally binding restraints.
CESR is taking part in an unprecedented worldwide effort by legal
organizations, practitioners, and scholars to uphold the rule of law by
putting governments on notice that they will face public condemnation and
legal prosecution for any war crimes they commit in Iraq. Michael Ratner,
President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights
litigation center said today, "We are working with CESR and likeminded
groups in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere to ensure that our leaders know
in advance that they will be held individually accountable for any and all
war crimes they commit."
The report points out that the impact of an unlawful war against Iraq will
be suffered primarily by innocent civilians. "A pre-emptive military
strike against Iraq is a cruel culmination of 13 years of punishment of
people for something they have not done," said Hans von Sponeck, CESR's
Europe representative and former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.
The suffering that is likely to result from a new war against Iraq has been
thoroughly documented by a team of six public health, nutrition, and
infrastructure experts from CESR who visited Iraq from January 17-30,
2003. A new article from the research team members, published in the
British medical journal the Lancet, concludes that military intervention in
Iraq will severely affect an already vulnerable population, and a
humanitarian disaster is likely to ensue.
TEARING UP THE RULES: THE ILLEGALITY OF INVADING IRAQ:
<http://www.cesr.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&catid=538&cpid=402&pressview=1>http://www.cesr.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&catid=538&cpid=402&pressview=1
THE HUMANITARIAN COST OF A WAR IN IRAQ:
<http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.361.9360.health_and_human_rights.24861.1&x=x.pdf>http://pdf.thelancet.com/pdfdownload?uid=llan.361.9360.health_and_human_rights.24861.1&x=x.pdf
As the US prepares to unleash an illegal and catastrophic attack against
the people of Iraq, we urge people everywhere to stand up for human rights
and the rule of law and raise their voices in loud opposition to this war.
In solidarity,
Jacob Park
Center for Economic and Social Rights
Emergency Campaign on Iraq
<http://www.cesr.org/iraq>http://www.cesr.org/iraq
