Job Announcement: Regional Coordinator - Middle East & North Africa; Coalition for the International Criminal Court

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Job Announcement: Regional Coordinator - Middle East & North Africa; Coalition for the International Criminal Court

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Regional Coordinator: Middle East-North Africa Region

Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC)


Application Deadline: 19 August 2011

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) includes 2,500 civil society organizations in 150 different countries working in partnership to strengthen international cooperation with the ICC; ensure that the Court is fair, effective and independent; make justice both visible and universal; and advance stronger national laws that deliver justice to victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The ICC is the first permanent Court with the mandate to bring to justice individuals who commit the most serious violations of international humanitarian law, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. For further information about the Court and the work of the Coalition, visit our website at www.coalitionfortheicc.org.

With major developments that have occurred and continue to evolve throughout MENA—particularly in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Bahrain, Syria and Morocco, and the UN Security Council’s referral of the Libya situation to the ICC—the world’s attention is focused closely on the region. In addition, there has been a shift whereby there is now strong interest from several government and interim government leaders to integrate justice into their respective efforts to address these developments.

Position:

The Coalition for the International Criminal Court seeks a Regional Coordinator for the MENA region for its International Secretariat, who will be based in the Middle East-North Africa region; country to be determined based in part on qualified applicant`s preferred location. The Regional Coordinator (RC) will have overall responsibility to implement the Coalition`s campaign in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Under the general supervision of the CICC Program Director and the direct supervision of the Director of Regional Programs, the RC will work in collaboration with the CICC Outreach Liaison for the region (who is based in New York) and the MENA Program Officer (based in Jordan) to advance the Coalition`s campaign goals of ensuring universal ratification, effective domestic legislation, international support for the International Criminal Court (ICC), stronger ICC networks, and support for the integrity of the Rome Statute.

Responsibilities:

The responsibilities of the MENA Regional Coordinator will include but are not limited to:

  • Creating and maintaining a good working relationship with CICC members throughout the region;
  • Providing support and guidance to CICC members throughout the region to reinforce their capacities to advance justice at the ICC and nationally;
  • Identifying new CICC members and allies in the region to diversity the web of CICC partners and ICC interested parties in the region;
  • Assessing developments in key countries such as Libya and others to be determined; developing advocacy strategies in each target country, together with key national and international partners to lead to progress on long term CICC objectives, including ratification, implementation, complementarity, and
    cooperation;
  • Facilitating exchanges of view and expertise between national NGOs and the government organs;
  • Meeting with government officials, academics, parliamentarians and other key stakeholders to promote the CICC’s goals at the national level;
  • Helping develop and review proposals from NGOs for ICC-related local activities;
  • Attending relevant regional and national meetings in MENA;
  • Identifying and developing relationships with key media contacts;
  • Drafting regular reports on the ICC process in MENA;
  • Maintaining internal communications by liaising regularly with the CICC Secretariat by email and phone;
  • Supervising other MENA-based office staff and interns, as required.
     

Qualifications:

  • Advanced degree in law, international relations or other relevant field, with specialization in international human rights or humanitarian law;
  • In-depth knowledge on Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia;
  • At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience;
  • Significant advocacy experience;
  • Ability to work independently with minimal supervision when required;
  • Ability to be a strong team player committed to overall objectives of the CICC;
  • Experience working closely with NGOs around the world, in particular in the region;
  • Fluent English and Arabic language skills including excellent writing, advocacy and public speaking skills in Arabic and English;
  • Ability to interact with NGOs, government officials and intergovernmental organizations with tact, diplomacy and cultural sensitivity;
  • Familiarity with regional politics and cultures;
  • Skilled at prioritizing and completing multiple tasks;
  • Demonstrated experience in personnel and project (programmatic and financial) management;
  • Willingness to travel extensively;
  • Dynamism, independence, strong commitment to the International Criminal Court and international justice.

Terms & Opportunities:

  • Salary commensurate with experience;
  • Opportunity to play a significant role in the establishment of a fair, effective and independent International Criminal Court;
  • Opportunity to influence the development of our campaign priorities in the MENA region.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates should send, in English:
- A curriculum vitae;
- A cover letter stating your interest in work with the CICC and summarizing your suitability for the position;
- Three references (name, title, affiliation, email and phone number).

Please email or fax applications to:

Meriam Manell Sassi, Program Associate
Coalition for the International Criminal Court
Fax: +1 (212) 599-1332
E-Mail: jobs@coalitionfortheicc.org

Include your first and last name, the job title (MENA Regional Coordinator) and the date of submission in the subject line of your email or fax. Applications must be received by August 19 and will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Note that only those candidates selected for interview will be notified. No phone calls, please.

The CICC is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer strongly committed to hiring and retaining a diverse and internationally representative staff.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412