Linda Malone '77
Linda Malone '77: Of Hussein and human rights
Basic human rights norms are the fundamental basis of living in a civilized society. Unitl there is a very general recognition of that, and every effort put to accomplishing that, we will be struggling with many problems that can't otherwise be eradicated.
- Linda Malone
Nothing in the spectacle that is the trial of Saddam Hussein has particularly
surprised Linda Malone. Even before it began last October, there were clear indications that the former dictator would try to challenge the authority of the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court and disrupt
proceedings, she said.
Malone, Marshall-Wythe Foundation professor of law and director of the Human Rights and National Security Law Program at the College of William and Mary School of Law, is not simply an academic observer of the trial. In her role as consultant to the Regimes Crimes Liason Office (RCLO) of the Department of Justice, which advises the Iraqi tribunal, Malone and her students prepare legal memos for use by the prosecutors and judges trying Hussein.
The Iraqi Higher Criminal Court is highly controversial within the international community and among international law scholars, Malone acknowledged, first to members of Duke’s International Law Students’ Association on October 8, and later in an interview. Initially lacking support within Iraq, it has acquired greater legitimacy through ratification at each stage of Iraq’s democratic process, she said. But the international community views the tribunal’s procedures, which mix Iraqi law and international law norms, as seriously flawed, particularly due to the Iraqi insistence on capital punishment.
“The United Nations, and most of the international community, was of the opinion that they could not support a tribunal that offered the death penalty, whatever the crimes might be,” said Malone. “I ultimately concluded that the atrocities that were committed by Hussein mandated that there be some kind of court established that would hold him responsible, and do so as fairly as possible, and as much in keeping as possible with international norms. So in trying to decide whether it was best to do absolutely nothing to support the court that was trying to try Saddam Hussein or provide support and hope to provide whatever assistance I could to make it as good a process as possible, I decided to go the latter course.”
Malone, a life member of the Law School’s Board of Visitors, is no stranger to war crimes trials. In the early 1990s, when allegations of systematic rape and other atrocities were first surfacing in the Bosnian war, she became involved as co-counsel in the case brought by Bosnia against the former Republic of Yugoslavia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over its assistance to the commission of human rights atrocities in Bosnia. “The merits of that case are still pending before the ICJ, which is obviously one of the problems in this area of the law,” she said.
While individual, isolated acts of rape have always been a war crime, Malone continued, the ICJ case seeks, in part, to establish the systematic use of rape as a tool of war as a more serious international law offense, one that can be considered torture as well as a crime against humanity and part of a genocidal campaign. Her work on that case led Malone to a more intensive study of women’s and children’s rights in Eastern Europe.
“In looking into the systematic rape targeting women that occurred in Bosnia, it was clear that many of the atrocities occurred against children as well,” she observed. “When you see what human rights violations are on a person to person level, and what this does to women, to children, to men, to societies, to cultures, to politics — to every aspect of a civil society — I, at least, have reached the conclusion that basic human rights norms are the fundamental basis of living in a civilized society. Until there is very general recognition of that, and every effort to put to accomplishing that, we will be struggling with many problems that can’t otherwise be eradicated.”
Malone continues to be involved with a program in Mostar, Bosnia, that brings together teenagers from different backgrounds, primarily Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, “so that the divisions that had existed from the war do not stand as barriers to a new generation that essentially was born in that war interacting with others that are different from themselves.” Stateside, she is part of the American Bar Association’s initiative to have the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified by the United States, the only country, other than Somalia, that has not done so.
Malone makes a clear link between her international human rights work and her international environmental scholarship which has been a focus throughout her career.
“If you don’t have the environment you need in order to live, function, and thrive, you cannot say the individual is fully benefiting and able to exercise basic human rights. I have only found that linkage is more and more closely tied–in places where we see that basic human rights are denied, very frequently part and parcel of that is a total disregard for the environment in which those citizens live.” Malone’s most recent book, Defending the Environment: Civil Society Strategies to Enforce International Environmental Law, discusses how civil society and non-state actors can try to enforce international environmental law, not just through the courts, but through lobbying, discourse, and other methods.
Long fascinated with the ways in which different cultures and societies address problems, and with the differences and commonalities of the problems themselves, Malone said she has always been inclined to a global approach to solutions. She finds inspiration for her work, too, in her two daughters, 16-year-old Erin and 11-year-old Corey.
"They are going to live with the decisions we're making today."