Earlier this month, the ICC prosecutor announced that Kenya's threats would not prevent the prosecution [JURIST report] of the six suspects responsible for Kenya's 2007 post-election violence. According to the statement, the ICC prosecutor would obtain arrest warrants for individuals behind these threats. The controversy surrounding the ICC's trial of Kenyan suspects followed from the prosecutor's September announcement [JURIST report] of charges against the six Kenyan suspects. This announcement came after the ICC pre-trial chamber granted [press release] the prosecutor authority to investigate into crimes against humanity committed during the 60 days of violence after the Kenya's presidential election. Violence following the election left more than 1,100 people dead, 3,500 injured and up to 600,000 forcibly displaced. In addition, there were hundreds of rapes and more than 100,000 different properties were destroyed in Kenya.

Last week, the Council of the EU adopted a decision to institute sanctions [JURIST report] against the Ivory Coast until Gbagbo concedes victory. Earlier this month, ICC deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda urged those in the Ivory Coast to refrain from further violence [JURIST report]. In February, Gbagbo dissolved [JURIST report] the country's parliament and electoral commission based on allegations of voter fraud in the long delayed presidential elections, the first in a decade. On disbanding the government, Gbagbo charged Soro with creation of new government and new election format. Gbagbo had accused Beugre Mambe, the head of the independent electoral commission, of fraud by attempting to register more than 400,000 whom Gbagbo considers to be foreigners. Opposition parties such as the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI) and Republican Gathering Party (RDR) [party websites, in French] said that most of those voters are ethnic groups in the north of the country, who would likely have voted against Gbagbo. Gbagbo was elected president in 2000 to serve a five-year term, but he has managed to stay in office through delaying six successive elections.

Videla's trial commenced in July after he was charged with an additional 49 counts [JURIST reports] of murder, kidnapping and torture in May following the identification of 40 bodies in Buenos Aires last year. In 2006, a federal judge ruled that the presidential pardon was unconstitutional [JURIST report], allowing criminal charges to be brought against the former dictator. Videla, who is now 85, is also facing charges in Italy, Spain, France and Germany [JURIST reports] involving the deaths of their citizens during the Dirty War. Videla has been in prison since 2008 while an investigation is underway for his role in the abduction of children born to political prisoners and forced disappearance victims during the Dirty War. A court revoked the house arrest conditions he had been granted in 1998 when the investigation began. During the period Videla was head of the military junta, an estimated 90,000 civilians were killed or disappeared.

In 2008, Mbarushimana was arrested by German border police [JURIST report] as he attempted to travel to Russia on charges that he killed 32 people during the Rwandan genocide. In 2005, the UN asked France to bring genocide charges [JURIST report] against Mbarushimana, who was then in the country under refugee status. Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [official website], refused to charge him and said the ICTR did not file an indictment against Mbarushimana because it lacked sufficient evidence against him.

The text of the Act suggests that its dominant purpose is to prohibit inappropriate practices, rather than to promote beneficial ones. It is true that the Act establishes a scheme to control assisted reproduction on a national level, and this initiative necessarily touches on provincial jurisdiction over medical research and practice. However, the dominant thrust of the Act is prohibitory, and the aspects that concern the provision of health services do not rise to the level of pith and substance. As s. 2 of the Act explains, the purpose of the Act is to safeguard against practices that may offend fundamental values and rights and harm human health, safety and dignity. The emphasis is on preventing practices that offend these values and produce this harm. The Act accomplishes its purpose of prohibiting reprehensible conduct by imposing sanctions. The Act is essentially a series of prohibitions, followed by a set of subsidiary provisions for their administration.

Canada's ban on human cloning [JURIST news archive] was first introduced [JURIST report] in 2003, and the Assisted Human Reproduction Act has been praised [press release] by the Center for Genetics and Society [advocacy website], a group seeking comprehensive regulation of embryonic use. In 2007, the UN University Institute for Advanced Studies [official website] called for a universal ban on human cloning, but numerous countries and US states [JURIST reports] have increasingly liberalized non-cloning use of human embryos [JURIST news archive].