Germans love telling people off. It’s an accepted part of culture here, an annoying habit that would probably get you beaten up in New Zealand. But in Berlin it’s not at all unusual for some random German to peer into your pram and tell you your child is not dressed warmly enough. Or to yell at you for crossing on the red in front of impressionable children. Or to inform you that, hey, they cut those holes in the speed bump so cyclists can ride through them and why are you walking over that particular part of the speed bump? No kidding – all this has happened.
But now, at least we foreigners have a righteous answer: “Yes, good German citizen, I will indeed dress my child more warmly/cross on the green/pay my taxes on time and obey all your rules – but only when Germany starts respecting international law.”
It’s against international law to starve civilians, activists say, referring to what Israel is doing in Gaza and what militias are doing to whole cities in civil-war-torn Sudan. It’s against international law for fighters to massacre civilians in intercommunal violence in Syria, other activists argue. And it’s also against international law to drop cluster bombs, block a country’s water supply, bomb jetboats out at sea or kill journalists, civilians, doctors and aid workers.
But somehow all these things keep happening. To all appearances, the system of international law that arose after World War II, in part to ensure atrocities like the Holocaust could never happen again, is being eroded. And unfortunately, and perhaps unexpectedly for a nation of finger-waggers, Germany seems to be playing a major role in the erosion.
Although there’s an international arrest warrant out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of war crimes in Gaza by the International Criminal Court, German politicians have said they would still consider inviting him home. That is despite the fact all nations who signed the Rome Statute – the document that established the ICC – are supposed to carry out the warrants it issues, Germany included.
Germany should also obey both domestic and international law when it makes decisions about exporting weapons. If there’s any chance German arms could be used to commit war crimes, exports must be curtailed. Yet Germany has continued to send arms to Israel.
Lawyers who work in this field will tell you international law has always been a bit like this. “Breaches [of international law] are not the exception but the rule,” a story in UK newspaper The Guardian noted. On the other hand, advocates of international law like to argue, a world without international law is far worse than one with it.what
International law still “serves as the common language that we can use for assessing state conduct,” Dapo Akande, a professor of international law at Oxford University and potential judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, explained in an interview this month.
And as one enthusiast put it recently in German specialist legal news outlet Voelkerrechtsblog, most nations actually obey international law most of the time.
Maybe even Germany. In August, the government said it was suspending new export permits for weapons to Israel. (Reports suggest old orders will still be fulfilled though.)
That decision was seen as controversial given Germany’s history. It may not have been voluntary, either. As one senior German diplomat confided during an interview, German politicians most likely sought legal advice as to whether they might be complicit in a genocide under international law if they didn’t change course. The answer must have been yes.
Cathrin Schaer is a freelance journalist living in Berlin.
