Arbour to International Crisis Group

Louise Arbour will be heading the International Crisis Group. From ICG's press release:

The Co-Chairs of the Board of the International Crisis Group, Lord Patten of Barnes and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, are very pleased to announce that the Honourable Louise Arbour has been selected to be the organisation’s next President and CEO.

She will be formally confirmed by Crisis Group’s Board of Trustees at its meeting in Washington DC in April 2009 and take up the position in July.
Ms Arbour brings with her decades of practical experience in international affairs, having held many high-profile posts in her distinguished career.

From 2004 to 2008, she served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the highest office mandated by the international community to promote and protect human rights. Before this, she was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

From 1996 to 1999, she served as the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In these roles, she drove a significant expansion of trial activity, bringing tens of accused war criminals into custody and leading the Tribunal to issue the first war crimes indictment by an international court of a serving head of state, President Slobodan Milosevic.

“I am thrilled to be taking up this new position”, Louise Arbour said. “Understanding very well the influence Crisis Group has among top policymakers, I look forward to leading the organisation in finding ways to confront conflicts and potential conflicts around the world.”

The Next Great Liberal Leader?

This is a repost from March of last year. I'd put this issue aside while I waited for Dion to play out his hand and Iggy to prove his mettle. We've seen how those two turned out.

I fear for the future of the Liberal Party as I've known it for more than four decades. That's why I'm going to make this pitch again. This is, in my opinion, the person to restore the Liberal Party of Canada to what we knew it to be.


To me, Stephane Dion has been a total disappointment. Unfortunately, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff didn't really inspire me much either.

The Liberal Party needs someone to put some life back into it and that has to be someone truly exceptional, someone not just Liberals but other Canadians can also rally behind, someone like Louise Arbour.

I can think of no finer person than Louise Arbour to be the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and this country's first, elected woman prime minister.

Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, war crimes prosecutor at the International Court of Justice, United Nations High Commissioner for human rights - I don't know anyone else in this country with credentials like that.

LouiseArbour is a known quantity. Her career speaks for itself. Intellect, integrity, experience, reputation - she's got it all and as much or more of it than anyone else. Her kind doesn't come along very often, sometimes it takes decades. We're fools if we don't at least try to bring Louise Arbour into the top ranks of our party.

Anybody for a "Draft Arbour" Movement?

I've never been more convinced that the future of the Liberal Party of Canada is nowhere near as robust as we might like to imagine and hinges directly on getting another "great" leader very, very soon.

I'd hoped that might be Michael Ignatieff but he's shown me wrong.

That brings me back to my previous favourite, the one person I know who has the intellect and character to be one of the once-in-a-generation great leaders, Louise Arbour.

Read the post following this and you'll see a glimpse of what I see in this woman and why she's what this Party needs. I'm not sure she'd go for it even if she was seriously asked but tell me someone who'd be better.

Keith Boag - Dion is Toast

The CBC's Keith Boag figures that, while Stephane Dion may want to whistle past the graveyard claiming Canadians have asked him to serve as leader of the Official Opposition, Dion's days are numbered and that number isn't very high either.

I agree with Boag. Stephane is a spent force who has essentially run the party into the ground. This isn't the NDP, it's the Liberal Party of Canada. You don't put up such a miserable showing and expect to hang around to heap more of the same on the party faithful.

Boag mentioned something else I also firmly believe. The Liberal Party of Canada can only suffer if it rushes into securing a replacement too quickly as, I suspect, both the Rae and Igantieff camps would prefer.

There may be no ideal candidate to lead the party within the existing front ranks. All have shortcomings and none has demonstrated the ability to capture the imagination and support of the Canadian electorate.

I already know who I want to lead the Liberal Party. I've been open about that for many months. I want a woman to run our party, I want a woman to lead this country. I want her not because she's a woman but regardless of her gender. I want Louise Arbour. I want Louise Arbour as Canada's next prime minister.

She's brilliant. She's accomplished. She's utterly fearless. Louise Arbour or someone of her stature is exactly the sort of person we need, Canada needs, to put our country back on an even keel. Supreme Court of Canada justice, war crimes prosecutor, UN human rights commissioner, Ms. Arbour stands so tall above the rest that she makes them dim in their mediocrity.

As I've written so often, we're coming out of an era of notional wealth and indulgence into an era when the old tricks no longer work. We need someone of exemplary intellect and forceful character who can use her talents to make us accepting, even wanting for what's only right and essential.

Living her detached from mainland Canada I accept the limitations that come from being removed and somewhat sheltered. Yet, if any of you can come up with someone better, please come up with names and explain why they should lead the Liberal Party out of the desert.

In earlier, less pressing times, I might even consider the idea of allowing Stephane Dion to have another go. These, however, are not less pressing times and we've gone about as far down this road as we can afford to travel.

I want Arbour. Who do you want? Come up with some names and explain why.

Louise Arbour - the New York Times' Take

In the crusty minds of those like Vic Toews, Louise Arbour is a "disgrace" but the non-befuddled world sees her in a much different light. The Times article notes that her tenure as the UN's Human Rights Commissioner has been tumultuous:

"...Ms. Arbour’s forthright views have angered many governments and interest groups. This year, Zimbabwe’s justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, said Ms. Arbour had turned her office into a “deified oracle which spews out edicts we all must follow.” Some supporters of Israel have called her an idiot.

The Bush administration, too, has objected to her frequent complaints about its use of torture, secret arrests and disregard of international law as part of the campaign against terrorism."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/europe/06arbour.html?_r=1&ref=world_&oref=slogin

A Fine Tribute to A Much Maligned Woman

I've made no secret of the high regard I hold for Louise Arbour. I believe she's exceptional in every respect and, in some, unparalleled.

She is also a person who has been much maligned abroad and at home. Washington's dislike for her was visceral and even our own journalistic malignancy, the National Post resorted to branding her an anti-semite.

If you're interested in Arbour's travails, Jeremy Kinsman has written an excellent account at the CBC website:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_kinsman/20080311.html

It's a good read, check it out.

Louise Arbour to Step Down?

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Canadian Louise Arbour, is expected to resign soon after four contentious years in the post.

The former Supreme Court justice has been known for her clashes with the Bush regime over the Iraq war, the death penalty and American excesses in its "war on terror." From the Washington Post:

Arbour, "...said the U.S.-led counterterrorism struggle has set back the cause of human rights by "decades" and has exacerbated a "profound divide" between the United States, its Western allies and the developing world. "The war on terror has inflicted a very serious setback for the international human rights agenda," she said."

Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor who secured the indictment of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, said that bedrock principles once taken for granted -- including the prohibition against torture -- have been eroded, and that what she considers Washington's excesses have undercut her efforts to crusade for human rights, particularly in places where political repression is greatest.

Human rights advocates largely praised Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, as a tough, principled lawyer who has offered the United Nations' most forceful critique of the United States' use of harsh interrogation techniques and the transfer of suspects to countries where they stand a chance of being tortured. They note that she has done more to expand the presence of U.N. rights monitors around the world, making reports on abuses from Baghdad to Katmandu routine.

But she has also been a lightning rod for American conservatives, including the former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who scolded her in 2005 for using Human Rights Day to criticize U.S. anti-terrorism tactics instead of highlighting rights abuses by countries such as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Even supporters say she has trod lightly over abuses by some of the most powerful U.N. members, including China and Russia, leaving the United Nations increasingly silent on some of the world's most pressing human rights issues."

Needless to say her rumoured resignation will be welcome news to Washington and to human rights abusers worldwide. There's one Canadian we can all be very proud of. This country would do well with a lot more Arbours and a lot fewer like Harper, Levant and Flanagan.