Month: June 2007

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Cambodia awaits genocide trials

The judges in the long-delayed Cambodian genocide trials began meeting on Monday to see if they could resolve issues that have been plaguing the court for the last six months. With constant problems arising from almost every meeting, it seems less and less likely that the suspects will ever be tried.

Speaking on behalf of her U.N.-appointed colleagues, Judge Sylvia Cartwright from New Zealand expressed optimism that the rules can be adopted.

“We know that if the internal rules are adopted in their present draft form, we have a foundation from which it may be possible to ensure a free, fair and transparent trial,” she said.

She and Kong Srim are co-chairing the plenary session.

As I’ve written about in the past, the biggest problem with these constant delays is the aging defendants, many of whom are dying.

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Save Darfur restructuring

Save Darfur, the organization that has been hugely successfully in rallying support for the crisis in Darfur, has recently fired their executive director and is in the process of reorganizing their board of directors. Even though the Sudan Tribune goes through a laundry list of complaints about a few of the practices of the organization, John Prendergast who serves on the board, said:

…the changes that the board decided to make were part of an effort to reorganize and re-energize the movement along the lines of its earliest conception: to be a broad, permanent alliance of many different types of organizations working together to prevent atrocities and genocide.

“The growth was so fast in the coalition, as was interest in the issue of Darfur and in the budget, that it was hard to kind of manage the difference between an organization and a coalition,” Mr. Prendergast said. “People felt that the time had some to go back to the roots of the coalition of groups that is so rich and so diverse.”

Having worked for non-profits for years, I can say that it’s often healthy for these organizations to restructure themselves. I might also add that non-profits have a tendency to create themselves with a certain agenda in mind and then wind up having to change directions because whatever issue they’re attempting to address winds up evolving.