The Coalescence of United States Immigration Law and International Criminal Law: An Exploration of Elias Zacarias in the Context of Female Genital Mutilation

In INS v. Elias Zacarias, the Supreme Court (SC) affirmed that nongovernmental actors (e.g., guerilla groups) can commit “persecution” as defined by § 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Human rights violations by any international actor, governmental or otherwise, can thus, according to Elias Zacarias, trigger asylum protection in the United States (US). In contrast, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), to which the US is a party, requires the victimizer to be a “public official or other person acting in an official capacity.” The CAT thus imposes a state actor requirement. This definitional discrepancy creates a curious intersection between US immigration law and international criminal law. Given the comparable levels of harm between persecution and torture, the holding in Elias Zecarias challenges the CAT’s state actor requirement. The state actor requirement is a critical element to the categorization of certain forms of torture under the CAT. A body of scholarly literature has examined whether female genital mutilation (FGM) constitute tortures under the CAT. A major obstacle to this recognition, however, is that FGM is traditionally committed by nongovernmental actors. Because the CAT requires that the victimizer be a state official, the commission of FGM has fallen outside of its realm. The holding in Elias Zecarias offers the opportunity to revisit both the CAT’s state actor requirement and the exclusion of suspected FGM perpetrators from the CAT’s personal jurisdiction. Part I of this essay assesses the prohibition of torture in international law. Part II, first, describes the history and prevalence of FGM, and second, examines the relationship between FGM and the CAT. Part III, first, explores the concept of persecution within US immigration law, and second, reviews the holding in Elias Zacarias. Part IV concludes that because FGM and persecution involve comparable levels of harm, the definition of the CAT should be expanded to include the commission of torture by both state and non-state actors. Extirpating the state actor requirement would permit the inclusion of FGM as torture under the CAT, which could then lead to, first, civil litigation in the US under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and/or the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA), and second, to individual criminal prosecution before the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The Most International of International Crimes: Toward the Incorporation of Drug Trafficking into the Subject Matter Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court

At the 2004 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, I presented an article on drug trafficking and its implications for the international legal and social science community. During that presentation, several audience members commented that the analysis would be considerably stronger with international drug data. While there are few reliable sources for this type of information, they do exist. This essay thus represents a current summary of the drug use and abuse prevalence data, both internationally and in the United States. Given the state of the drug problem across the globe, the argument for the incorporation of drug trafficking into the subject matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is significantly more persuasive. The international legal community worked toward the creation of a permanent international criminal court for most of the 20th century. The goal of establishing a permanent institution to prosecute the most egregious violations of international criminal law culminated with the formation of the ICC. Established during the summer of 2002, the subject matter of the ICC includes four categories of offenses – the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. These four categories of offenses are eligible for prosecution before the ICC because they violate fundamental humanitarian principles and, arguably, constitute the most serious crimes of international concern. The Court’s subject matter jurisdiction (SMJ) is limited to only these four categories of offenses. One other crime of international significance – drug trafficking – is ineligible for prosecution before the ICC. Given the scourge of drug trafficking across the international community and the financial and personal harms that inevitably result from drug-related offenses, this is a shameful exclusion. Part I of this essay discusses the prevalence, associated harms, and costs of illicit drug use worldwide. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data are presented to illustrate the illimitable nature of the problem. Part II reviews the major narcotics conventions authored during the 20th century and the efforts undertaken by the international community to address the international drug problem. Part III presents a history of the ICC and reviews the work undertaken by the ICC to date. Part IV presents the arguments for and against expanding the SMJ of the ICC to incorporate drug trafficking. Given that modern states are part of an interdependent, international community, it seems evident that drug trafficking is, by any objective standard, the most international of international crimes and should fall under the SMJ of the ICC

Deinstitutionalization, Family Reunification, and the Best Interests of the Child : An Examination of Armenia\u27s Child Protection Obligations Under Conventional International Law

For nearly a century, the global community has sought to afford children legal protections, abandoning widely held views that children were pecuniary assets. In the United States and globally, a nascent children’s rights movement culminated in broad child welfare reform. Whether adoption, armed conflict, child labor, education, human trafficking, or deinstitutionalization, the post-war 20th century witnessed an evolution of international child protections. The prevailing standard of “best interests of the child” (BIC) has been incorporated into domestic and international law doctrine and, not surprisingly, has been operationalized in a variety of ways. In recent years, the standard has been explored in the context of residential care institutions. Some advocates of deinstitutionalization assert that children should be reunified with biological relatives under all circumstances. Absolutes, however, are legally precarious and may be practically inconsistent with the BIC standard that practitioners and policymakers are required to acquiesce. In the current essay, the history of international child protection legislation is explored, and the BIC standard is assessed in the context of Armenia’s social system. I evaluate Armenia’s child protection obligations and conclude that the BIC standard may not always trigger deinstitutionalization and family reunification. Implications for international human rights law and the global child protection movement are assessed

Prioritizing a Continuum of Care for Older Orphan Populations: A Qualitative Study from Two Transitional Centers in Armenia

Previous research in residential childcare institutions (RCI) has focused on youth under the age of eighteen. While reaching the age of majority typically signals the end of compulsory childhood institutionalization, age qualifications may deny ministration to young adults whose adolescence was marked by poverty, trauma, violence, or emotional deprivation. To investigate the need for a seamless transition into young adulthood, we interviewed 12 female residents housed in two “transitional centers” (TC) in Armenia. The respondents, while eager for emotional and fiscal autonomy, perceived their previous RCI as integral to their emotional development and thus recognized the need for ancillary care to prepare them for independent living. These findings suggest that Armenia’s TC offer a critical bridge between adolescence and adulthood, providing an environment within which socially vulnerable young adults can prepare for emotional, financial, and intellectual independence. Countries with significant orphan populations should consider integrating a TC component into their continuum of care model to assure that their most vulnerable children populations receive support throughout young adulthood

The Relationship Between Future orientation and Street Substance Use among Texas alternative School Students

Self-reported substance use data were collected from 963 alternative school students in grades 7-12 who were surveyed through the Safer Choices 2 study in Houston, Texas. Data were collected between October 2000 and March 2001. Logistic regression analyses indicated that lower levels of future orientation was significantly associated (OR = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.81-0.97) with thirty-day substance use after controlling for age and gender. In addition, lower levels of future orientation was found to have a significant association with students\u27 lifetime substance use (OR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.87-.99) after controlling for age, race, and gender. While the relationships tested in this study are exploratory, they provide evidence for an important connection between future orientation and substance use among adolescents attending alternative schools

14-3-3theta Protects against Neurotoxicity in a Cellular Parkinson's Disease Model through Inhibition of the Apoptotic Factor Bax

Disruption of 14-3-3 function by alpha-synuclein has been implicated in Parkinson's disease. As 14-3-3s are important regulators of cell death pathways, disruption of 14-3-3s could result in the release of pro-apoptotic factors, such as Bax. We have previously shown that overexpression of 14-3-3θ reduces cell loss in response to rotenone and MPP+ in dopaminergic cell culture and reduces cell loss in transgenic C. elegans that overexpress alpha-synuclein. In this study, we investigate the mechanism for 14-3-3θ's neuroprotection against rotenone toxicity. While 14-3-3s can inhibit many pro-apoptotic factors, we demonstrate that inhibition of one factor in particular, Bax, is important to 14-3-3s' protection against rotenone toxicity in dopaminergic cells. We found that 14-3-3θ overexpression reduced Bax activation and downstream signaling events, including cytochrome C release and caspase 3 activation. Pharmacological inhibition or shRNA knockdown of Bax provided protection against rotenone, comparable to 14-3-3θ's neuroprotective effects. A 14-3-3θ mutant incapable of binding Bax failed to protect against rotenone. These data suggest that 14-3-3θ's neuroprotective effects against rotenone are at least partially mediated by Bax inhibition and point to a potential therapeutic role of 14-3-3s in Parkinson's disease