A justiciable responsibility to prevent mass atrocities?

by Eze Eluchie

Can a responsibility to prevent mass atrocities be inferred from the coming into force of the Rome Statutes?

Can this responsibility be justiciable, such as to make it a crime punishable under International Law for a State not to act to prevent the commission mass atrocities?

For weeks, the world had known that the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobani was within the sights of the Islamic State  (IS)militants and that when IS finally overruns Kobani, that mass killings and other atrocities tantamount to international crimes would be committed.

Yet, the authorities in Turkey, stood idly by, with its soldiers watching across unmarked borders, as the IS militants inched closer by the day to overrun Kobani. An overrun that is now leading to a massacre of monumental proportions.

What relevance is the much touted Responsibility to Protect (R2P) if there is no accountability for deliberate failure to stop the commission of mass atrocities, crimes against humanity and or genocides?



Picture: Mass exodus of Kurds from Kobani, Syria into Turkey to escape the advancing Islamic State 

The Echezona Project - Reuniting children displaced during Biafran Genocide

by Eze Eluchie

Efforts to trace the thousands of children ‘airlifted’ out of their places of origin in present day South Eastern Nigeria (during the Nigeria – Biafra War, 1967 - 1970) to places as diverse as Ivory Coast and Gabon is ongoing. At the end of the war, some of the ‘airlifted children’ were reunited with their families.

The Echezona Project seeks to identify and reunite children who were not returned to their kith and kin in South Eastern Nigeria.

The Echezona Project has already, via research undertaken in France, Nigeria, Ireland and the United States, sourced the identities and ‘points of departure’ of thousands of these children, collated details of the airlifts and will shortly be progressing to using trace technology to identify the families of the ‘airlifted children’ with the objective, where possible, to reunite these children with their filial relatives.

The Echezona Project Team, which I am a part of, is comprised of experts in diverse fields with myriad of experience, inclusive of persons who are part of ongoing efforts at using trace technology to reunite displaced peoples from the El Salvador Civil Wars and versed in ensuring accountability and closure for episodes of Genocide and Mass Atrocities

The right to an identity is an inalienable fundamental right. Let us strive to ensure Never Again!



Picture: Some of the Biafran children at point of airlift (usually, the only mark of name/origin is the little piece of white paper stuck unto the heads of the children as shown on one of the boys in the picture – this piece of paper would have dropped off by the time of arrival at the reception/refugee center)

Cleansing our rot

by Eze Eluchie

When we neglect to do the needful, we should not get upset if others who have more respect for their populations do what we should have done.

We neglected to serve justice to a notorious felon who stupendously bought his way to high political office, only for the British to go after the crook and slam him behind bars, where he rightly belonged; Today, after years of manipulating the Nigerian (in)justice system, an ex-Governor of one of Nigeria’s 36 States, James Onanefe Ibori is cooling his ass off in a British jail!

There are so many others in the mould of the above mentioned felon who continue to pollute our environment with their presence.

We are now prevaricating over the avoidable death of over 115 people of several nationalities in the collapse of a multi-storey complex which in the first instance ought not to have been erected, we should therefore not raise as much as a whimper when those involved, in any way whatsoever, have international warrants against them executed, and such people brought to justice in foreign jurisdictions.

If ever our system was under the illusion that clearing the site of the collapsed 6-storey building at the premises of the ‘Synagogue Church of All Nations’ in Lagos of its debris will sweep away the crime that was evidently committed at that site, we should have a rethink. Continuing efforts by the owners of the collapsed structure at insulting the intelligence of the discerning public by ludicrous claims of some ‘unidentified flying object’ circulating above the structure prior to its collapse, will only serve to elicit the interest of authorities external to our domestic rulership in the matter and internationalize the desire and ability to dispense justice.

Further harrowing details that officials of the Church which owns the collapsed building physically prevented first responders and official/public rescue services from entering the premises for over 48 hours after the tragedy occurred and that the proprietor of the Synagogue Church offered journalists covering the collapse some incentives to ensure ‘fair report’ of the incident, will only serve to heighten the need for justice.

Our flawed structure, composition and institutions continue to serve to consign us to where we are whilst the rest of the world keep on advancing. Restructuring and renegotiation of the Nigerian state may perhaps yet afford us an opportunity of taking our rightful place in the comity of nations.




Picture: Lagos State Government officials at site of collapsed Synagogue church building.