Book Notes

For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator. By Richard Goldstone. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. 152. $18.50, cloth.

In For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator, Richard Goldstone offers the reader glimpses of his extraordinary career, from his days as a student activist against apartheid to his appointment as the world’s first prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Delivered originally as a set of lectures at Yale University in 1998, this book gives readers valuable insight into some of the challenges that Goldstone confronted as chief prosecutor.

Goldstone traces his rise to a position of leadership in the international criminal justice movement to his days as a law student in South Africa. Active in student politics and the anti-apartheid struggle, he went onto play a crucial yet unanticipated role in helping to dismantle apartheid. Upon graduation, Goldstone entered commercial law, not politics. He stayed there for fifteen years, until he was appointed judge on the Transvaal Supreme Court in 1978. In 1982, Goldstone issued a watershed opinion in which he refused to eject a woman of color under the Groups Areas Act, a statute enforcing racial residential segregation. Noting that the statute made such enforcement discretionary, Goldstone’s ruling halted all prosecutions under the Act. In 1990, as political violence escalated, former President F. W. de Klerk asked Goldstone to head a judicial investigation into the Sebokeng Massacre, a demonstration in which the police killed eleven people and injured four hundred. Goldstone made the hearings accessible to the public, locating them near the site of the demonstration. His ruling that the police should be prosecuted for murder both affirmed his reputation as impartial and led to his first experience with threats and hate mail. Soon thereafter, with unanimous support of all parties to the National Peace Accord, Goldstone was offered to chair what came to be known as the Goldstone Commission. His work exposed how the South African security forces, relying on violence and murder, sought to undermine the transition to democracy. He

organized raids against security forces and collected evidence documenting the involvement of senior police officers and government ministers. Neither threats to his safety nor hostility from the conservative media and some politicians deterred Goldstone.

In July 1994, the Security Council elected Goldstone chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia. Goldstone had no prosecution experience and minimal knowledge of humanitarian law. Yet the Security Council voted for him unanimously. Goldstone’s greatest challenge was to help legitimize the court by demonstrating that an international system of accountability was both feasible and desirable. In fact, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath asked him at the time, “Why did you accept such a ridiculous job?” From the beginning, and at every turn, Goldstone had to deal with a dismissive and skeptical media, a deficiency in funds, and state-created obstacles. Even governments that professed support for the tribunal posed logistical challenges. The United States, for instance, responded extremely slowly to Goldstone’s requests for critical intelligence information. France initially insisted that the investigators consult its citizens only through formal court proceedings—a costly and time-consuming requirement that it later withdrew.

Goldstone’s responsibilities increased when the Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, appointing him as chief prosecutor for that tribunal as well. His task of setting up office in Kigali was not easy. Although they had initially requested the establishment of the tribunal, representatives of Rwanda were the only ones to ultimately vote against it. While Rwandan officials were extremely cooperative in helping establish the prosecutor’s office, they nevertheless maintained their criticism of the tribunal, including the decision to locate the hearings in Tanzania, and Goldstone’s insistence that some of the accused stand trial in the tribunal rather than in national courts. Goldstone acknowledges such criticism, but only in passing.

In both his discussion of the tribunals and of South Africa, Goldstone rather surprisingly eschews the opportunity to provide extensive analytical lessons. He does, however, provide lively anecdotes, emphasizing the need for the prosecution to be completely independent of any political interference. Goldstone relates one incident, for instance, in which former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali hinted at dismay that he had not been consulted about a decision to indict Radovan Karadzic. Although Boutros-Ghali resisted interfering with Goldstone’s indictment, it is clear that he favored a delay in the indictment until after peace negotiations had succeeded. Goldstone not only argues that such political considerations should not constrain the prosecutor, but also that they can be misplaced. He states, perhaps too strongly, that the failure to indict Karadzic would actually have prevented the Dayton Accord negotiations, since Alija Izetbegovic, the president of Bosnia, would not have attended them in Karadzic’s presence.

Even as Goldstone calls for absolute independence of the prosecutor’s office, an important theme that emerges from his narrative involves the political intricacies of his appointment as the first prosecutor. Early on, Goldstone recognized that he would have to cultivate personal relationships with world leaders to lend credibility to the court. In discussing one trip to Yugoslavia, for example, Goldstone writes that “without personal contact with relevant players such cooperation [from Bosnia and Croatian authorities] would not have been possible.” Furthermore, the book shows how inextricably linked his office is to state cooperation. Goldstone expresses serious disappointment and frustration with the United States and Europe for their failure to take any action to arrest those indicted, such as Karadzic.

In his final chapter, Goldstone urges the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). He addresses some of the practical diffi-culties that the ICC would pose, arguing that an ICC prosecutor should not defer to national amnesties. At the same time, however, he recognizes that some balance must be struck between national and international processes seeking justice. Goldstone criticizes the US deference to its military, both in its opposition to the ICC and in failing to arrest indicted war criminals.

Goldstone’s book is inspirational. Yet, the interested reader would do well to consult some other books to attain a more comprehensive understanding of the debate and criticism surrounding both the tribunals and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The tribunals have been criticized for selective and delayed prosecution, for an inadequate defense, and for aggravating, not healing, the emotional scars of survivor-witnesses. For Humanity is a valuable history of obstacles overcome in the establishment of the two tribunals and invites a more critical analysis of their effectiveness and potential to be replicated on a truly global scale.

—Suzanne Katzenstein

Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 15, Spring 2002