The July 2007 cover of Vanity Affair had 20 different covers with photos of celebrities shot by Annie Leibovitz. “These are incredible people of our time, involved in this effort to make Africa better, to get Africa self-sufficient, and to try to get rid of AIDS on the continent,” she said.

Celebrity campaigns to “save Africa” often play into stereotypes that perpetuate a single homogenous story about what it means to be “African.”

Viewers are confronted with Africa as “the dark continent,” writes James Michira in his 2002 essay, “Images of Africa in the Western Media” (PDF), a wild jungle full of exotic animals, famine, violence, conflict, disease, and political instability.

“These images are not all that Africa is about,” asserts Michira. Yet it is these unbalanced images that are used for celebrity-based campaigns.

In the media, stereotypical images of Africa are widely distributed when celebrity-based campaigns are given news coverage, while stories written about issues within the continent of Africa are ignored.

As Julie Hollar of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a U.S.-based media watch organization, noted back in 2007, “Following Bono to Africa or reporting on conflict diamonds via Leonardo DiCaprio is both easier and more ratings-friendly than sustaining bureaus and teams of reporters on the ground.”

And a celebrity face that presents a unified understanding of “Africa” and “African” helps generate profits. iPods, Starbucks coffee and Belvedere vodka are among the many products that benefit from this branding of Africa as part of Bono’s (RED) campaign, for example.

What the (RED) campaign and others ignore is that such celebrity advocacy has created misrepresentations which, according to Zimbabwean freelance journalist Innocent Madawo, “overemphasize its [Africa’s] political and socio-economic shortcomings, while playing down or ignoring its potential or even success stories.”

In other words, celebrity advocacy potentially does more harm than good when it comes to constructing representations of Africa.

William Easterly, author of  White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, puts it another way: “Could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?“

PNPs have allowed provinces to nominate immigrants for permanent residence according to regional labour needs rather than relying on federal economic immigration programs, which take a country-wide outlook, since 1998.

How welcoming is Canada? Photo courtesy of Flickr user 5of7 via Creative Commons

If the feds set minimum language requirements for PNPs, it would encroach upon provinces’ ability to recruit newcomers on their own terms, as pointed out in this recent Winnipeg Free Press op-ed. Minimum language requirements would be especially detrimental to those provinces that target semi-skilled workers in industries such as construction, hotel and lodging and food services.

Prairie provinces in particular have become increasingly reliant on their PNPs to build a permanent semi-skilled workforce.  Under PNPs, more than 36,000 new permanent residents are brought into Canada each year; between 42,000 and 45,000 immigrants are expected to be admitted via the program in 2012.

In the meantime, many employers already rely heavily on the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which doesn’t have a minimum language requirement. Designed to fill temporary jobs, the TFWP is also especially popular in high-growth prairie provinces like Alberta.

However, a 2010 IRPP study suggested that TFWs, whose visas tie them to a single employer, are subsequently vulnerable to employment abuse. Permanent residents, even those with low language skills, are not as vulnerable to abuse because they enjoy labour mobility.

A minimum language requirement for PNPs would shut out a significant number of semi-skilled workers hoping for permanent residency, thereby increasing the number of TFWs. Provinces reliant on PNPs would suffer as employers invest in the resources needed to constantly turn over TFWs as their visas expire.

Canada shouldn’t be using temporary labour for permanent jobs. Instead the country should be investing in those that want to invest in Canada.

While the total number of drone-related deaths remains unclear, the non-profit Bureau for Investigative Journalism, based in London, believes that as of October of 2011, at least 2,347 people had been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone since 2004. Some 392 of these deaths were civilians, including an estimated 175 children.

Such numbers indicate that drones are not the future of warfare — they are the now of warfare. That being the case, what does the future really hold?

Northrop Grumman's X-47B completed its first test flight on Feb. 4, 2011 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (U.S. Air Force photo/Rob Densmore)

The future of warfare is pilot-less

The U.S. military is commissioning companies like Northrop Grumman to develop autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Northrop Grumman’s X-47B, for example, is an experimental stealth fighter drone that is capable of taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier without an in-cockpit or on-the-ground pilot.

The purpose of autonomous UAS, according to the United States Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047, is to increase “effects while potentially reducing cost, forward footprint and risk.” In other words, autonomous UAS will enable one operator to monitor several drones at once.

Northrop Grumman is developing aerial refueling stations — similar to those already used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy (pictured above) — for its most advanced UAS, including the X-47B (U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. William Greer)

The future of warfare is unblinking

The U.S. military is also commissioning companies to develop UAS that are capable of refueling themselves. Here, again, the X-47B is a pioneer. High-altitude, long-endurance UAS — like Predator and Reaper drones — can execute surveillance and reconnaissance missions for approximately two days at a time.

The X-47B, however, will be capable of refueling itself at aerial refueling stations (much like those already used by manned vehicles belonging to the U.S. Air Force and Navy), allowing it to remain airborne for 50 to 100 hours.

Similarly, as the LA Times reported in Dec. 2010, QinetiQ’s lightweight, solar-powered Zephyr drone is capable of flying at 70,000 feet for 14 days straight without refueling.

Autonomous aerial refueling and “green-powered” drones will dramatically extend the range and endurance of unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

The future of warfare swarms

While nano-drone technology — such as AeroVironment’s Hummingbird nano-drone — remains in the development stages, its future is already clear: autonomous swarms. On Feb. 2, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania released a video of their “nano quadrotors” — small, unmanned autonomous helicopters that are capable of communicating with and distancing themselves from each other, sensing and avoiding objects in their flight path and flying in synchronized patterns.

Boeing is working on similar projects for the U.S. military.

This technology will soon be used for monitoring and surveillance purposes, for inspecting combat and disaster zones and in search-and-rescue operations.

The future of warfare never forgets a face

Perhaps the most controversial development in drone warfare is the U.S. military’s desire to equip UAS with facial recognition technology.

Progeny Systems is developing software that uses pictures of a target’s face or “soft-biometric” identifiers — such as age, gender, ethnicity, race, height, weight, etc. — to digitally construct and register a 3-D model of the person’s face, giving drones the ability to identify and track targets more than 750 feet away.

Another firm, Charles River Analytics, is building a human behaviour engine that uses intelligence data from “informants’ tips, drone footage and captured phone calls” to conduct “intent-based threat assessments of individuals and groups,” according to CBC.  In other words, drones will soon be able to detect and analyze human emotion.

This technology will allow the military to locate, hunt and kill its enemies more effectively and more precisely than ever before.

Thus, drones are not “the future of warfare,” nor are they the “stuff of science fiction” being used non-consequentially in far-off distant lands. Rather, they are lean, mean, killing machines being used right now in the War on Terror and, as shown, they are getting leaner, meaner and more deadly very quickly.

It’s time that we acknowledge — and hold ourselves accountable to — the importance of context when reporting about Africa.

Images of exotic safari animals are often portrayed as "real" Africa, when I lived in South Africa, the only time I saw an elephant was in a game reserve. ©babasteve via flickr.

Binyavanga Wainaina, an award-winning editor and writer originally from Nakuru, Kenya, tackled this topic in his 2005 article,“HowtowriteaboutAfrica.” His piece didn’t provide the one-size-fits-all solution that some readers may have desired, however; he resorted to satire out of desperation over the mainstream’s constant misrepresentation of the continent on which he was born.

“Treat Africa as if it were one country,” he writes, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving.”

Later in the piece, he advises: “Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the ‘real Africa,’ and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West.”

I find Wainaina’s blunt openness about his frustrations with mainstream representations refreshing, but only up to a point. For just as not all people in Africa are the same, not all stories written about Africa lack context and perpetuate stereotypes.

That being said, it should not be common practice to say that someone is going to or from “Africa” unless they are going to or from multiple countries on the continent of Africa. The more detailed the reporting, the more information provided to the readers, and the more informed and educated people can become.

Background, which explains the uniqueness and specifics of a nation, city, or group of people, is crucial.

“[C]ontextual background…including how the West contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa, are conspicuously missing from [most] Western media coverage of Africa,” argues academic and journalist Nana Bonsu-Amoako.

Understanding the history of global development and the politics within one or among several countries will produce better stories and fill the gap that Bonsu-Amoako discusses.

And as he rightly points out, a “reporting paradigm” needs to allow people within Africa to have a voice in telling their stories.

It may be intended to spark rage, but could graphic footage from Syria backfire? (Image courtesy Flickr user Freestylee via Creative Commons.)

The recent footage coming out of Syria has been brutal. The Syrian regime seems intent on making an example of the Free Syrian Army holed up in Bab Amr, the opposition stronghold neighbourhood in Homs. But it is innocent civilians who are taking the brunt of the punishment. Stories of shelling, shrapnel bombs, snipers and torture, all against civilians, accompany Twitter hashtags like #Syria and #Homs.

Both Andy Carvin and Anthony de Rosa have tweeted multiple video links with warnings about graphic content: the dead and dying, wounded children, the maimed. It’s obvious that the content is affecting Carvin, who tweeted: “After everything that happened with Hamza this week, the video of the 2-yr-old really shook me up. Dammit. #homs #syria”

Blogger Zeynep Tufecki wrote in support of Carvin’s choice to tweet graphic video links, saying that Twitter curators are changing the content of news that we view. She argues that by tweeting links to graphic content that would have never made prime time news, we are now able to obtain a more accurate picture of what is happening in countries like Syria. In addition, because curators like Carvin react personally to these videos, it brings a human face to the conflict in a way that new anchors do not. Tufecki says this “anti-playstation effect” is in contrast to sterile mainstream news reporting which distances viewers from the human reality of war.

But while I agree with Tufecki, I also wonder what long-term effect Twitter will have on the way we view news.

While I understand that there are terrible atrocities being committed in Homs, I have already begun to avoid clicking on links sent out by Carvin and others like him. The warning tells the content, and I’d rather not have my mind full of images of death and dying. Is this chicken of me? Possibly. Or it might just be human: some sights are simply too much to bear.

Will the majority of Twitter users begin, like me, to skip over graphic content? Or, if they view it, will they become numbed to it? Ostensibly, the goal of Free Syrian Army supporters, in tweeting out this kind of content, is to inform the world of the Syrian government’s actions and to draw support for their cause. But could they be shooting themselves in the foot? Will there be a breaking point at which Twitter users tune out and turn away? The evening news initially brought the same kind of horrified response. It had the power to move people and governments to action. Now, however, too many turn away with a feeling of powerlessness.

I suspect that graphic content overload coming out of Syria via Twitter will have the same effect of shutting viewers down, causing them to tune out and turn off. And that would be worse for the revolution than if the graphic content had remained unseen.

Duch is sentenced to life in prison. Image courtesy of Reuters via ECCC handout.

Duch oversaw S-21, the prison camp where at least 12,000 people were tortured and murdered during the Khmer Rouge regime. He was sentenced to 35 years in July 2010, but would have only served 19 years due to previous detention.

According to court documents, Duch appealed the sentence by claiming that his role at S-21 did not make him a senior regime leader and, therefore, did not qualify him to be tried under the UN-backed tribunal. Judges disagreed and increased his original sentence to life.

This decision set a new standard for the tribunal and reassured Cambodians that Duch will never be free. Whether or not it repaired the floundering tribunal’s credibility, however, is questionable. The ECCC had to admit flaws in the reasoning of the first case in order to justify changing Duch’s sentence.

“The Supreme Court Chamber held that in determining sentence the Trial Chamber attached undue weight to mitigating circumstances and insufficient weight to the gravity of crimes and aggravating circumstances,” the ECCC said in a statement.

Thousands of Cambodians were tortured in the converted classrooms of S-21 under Duch's direction, here pictured in early 2010.

Khmer Rouge guards shackled S-21 prisoners to the floor where they would lie for days without food and water. Prisoners were only freed for torture sessions, during which many confessed to crimes they never committed. A large number of the prison’s victims were young children and infants dubbed traitors because of their parents.

Only seven people are known to have survived Cambodia’s largest Khmer Rouge execution centre, according to Seattle’s Killing Fields Museum. And Duch was the centre’s leader. So the tribunal’s reputation was threatened from the moment Duch’s original sentence was announced because, unlike S-21′s prisoners, he could have outlived his incarceration. He was only 69 years old in 2010.

Cambodia’s tribunal has experienced major setbacks and challenges, so this new sentencing decision has established an important precedent. It has corrected a flaw in the tribunal’s administration of justice, but also created new challenges for subsequent trials. Judges will have to decide how to sentence defendants who held lesser leadership roles and who were responsible for fewer killings.

In other words, it was a landmark decision for the ECCC. Life in prison is now viewed as a successful achievement of justice since the death penalty is not a sentencing option in Cambodia. Consequently, it will be interesting to see whether Cambodians consider justice to have been achieved if the defendants currently being tried do not receive life sentences.

This MQ-9 Reaper drone (also referred to as a Predator B) is similar to those used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection along America's northern and southern borders (U.S. Air Force photo/Paul Ridgeway)

Once upon a summer’s eve in 2010, three cows and their calves grazed their way onto the 3,000-acre Brossart family farm in Nelson County, N.D. Months later, this common rural happenstance resulted in the first known Predator drone-assisted arrests of American citizens.

The arrests reflect a growing trend among American law enforcement agencies to use drones (Predator and otherwise) for civilian policing purposes. In fact, according to the LA Times, North Dakota law enforcement agencies used “two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base” between June and December 2010 “to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights.”

Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke and his fellow deputies arrested Rodney Brossart for failing to report and return the missing bovines to their rightful owner(s). Officers also arrested Brossart’s daughter, Abby, for reportedly hitting an officer during her father’s arrest.

When Janke and his fellow deputies later returned to the compound to find and collect the cattle, Brossart’s three gun-toting sons — Alex, Jacob and Thomas — chased them off the property.

“Fearful of an armed standoff, [Janke] called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone,” reported the LA Times.

The Predator B drone — similar to those used in the War on Terror to hunt, stalk and kill suspected terrorists — is one of nine currently employed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to patrol America’s northern and southern borders for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

The drone circled two miles above the Brossart farm for 16 hours while delivering Janke and his team live video footage of the property. This allowed officers to determine when it was safe for them to storm the compound and apprehend the Brossart brothers.

This begs the question: are drone-assisted police searches legal in America?

A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court offers us a hint. On Jan. 24 all nine Justices ruled police cannot legally attach Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to the vehicles of suspected criminals without a valid search warrant.

Four Justices argued that doing so constitutes trespassing on private property and infringes upon suspects’ “reasonable expectation of privacy,” as established in Katz v. United States (1967).

Five Justices argued that attaching GPS tracking devices to suspects’ vehicles violates the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees Americans the right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s concurring opinion indicates how the Justices might rule if the case had involved drone, rather than GPS, surveillance.

Justice Sotomayor wrote (on page 17):

Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring — by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track — may “alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.”

As Matt Waite at the Drone Journalism Lab points out, replace “GPS” with “drone” and the tone remains the same.

News reports of the Brossart incident do not explicitly state where the Brossart brothers were located on their property when the drone was overhead. However, it seems reasonable to assume they were in their home at some point during the 16-hour standoff (note: the Daily Mail reports police “stormed the compound,” indicating the men were inside). That being the case, the drone search conducted by Janke and his team might have violated the Brossart’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” and infringed upon their Fourth Amendment right to be secure in their houses if the officers had failed to obtain a valid search warrant first.

While the officers in this case completed the appropriate paperwork, rights groups are concerned that the use of drones by law enforcement agencies poses a significant threat to civil liberties. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on warrantless GPS tracking, however, provides a glimmer of hope for individual privacy rights in the drone age.

There is no indication that oil sands production is going to slow. The federal government just announced a plan to have increased monitoring and regulation of soil and water quality in place by 2015 (though this project is industry-funded and was initiated by a perceived need to revamp the international image of the oil sands). Kinder Morgan is expected to present a plan to double the capacity of their Trans-Mountain pipeline, taking it to nearly 600,000 barrels per day by 2015. Similarly, Mr. Harper and his ministers have made little secret of their aspirations for exporting Alberta’s black gold to Asia. Quite simply, barring a coup by the NDP in Ottawa, the oil sands are going to be a part of Canada’s energy landscape. And, unfortunately, oil production necessitates pipelines.

There are good reasons for environmental opposition to the NGP: the pristine wilderness the pipeline would traverse; tanker traffic in the dubious waters near Kitimat; and the provocative idea that the NGP heralds our commitment to fossil fuel energy. It’s also important to consider a 2010 declaration by nearly 60 First Nations to uphold a ban on tanker traffic along BC’s northern coast. It’s interesting to note, however, Premier Clarke’s successes in partnering with the Haisla First Nation and several energy giants in a plan to build three liquid natural gas export refineries around Kitimat (begging the question, is tanker traffic really the issue for First Nations, or was it Enbridge’s flagrant disregard for including their interests in the early planning phases that spawned such fierce resistance?).  The LNG refineries also suggest that the people of BC, while direly opposed to pipelines, have taken surprisingly little issue with the controversial fracking process required to access the wealth of shale gas in northern British Columbia.

What, then, are the alternatives to the NGP? It is important to preface this discussion by saying that the Keystone XL project is far from dead- a post-election resurrection would not be surprising- and that could seriously shift focus elsewhere. But assuming it is not built, then the options are few: 1) increase rail capacity to ship bitumen to the Pacific by railcar, or 2) build a different pipeline elsewhere.

Both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific have put forth bids to provide a ‘railcar pipeline’ for Alberta crude, which would negate the risks of oil spills along a pipeline. It would be a dedicated system of tanker railcars that shuttle bitumen from the oil sands to coast. However, the infrastructure required to meet supply would be immense and would have considerable environmental impacts itself. Also, the railway alternative does not address the oil tanker problem. A port, such as the one at Kitimat, would need to be expanded, as it’s not logistically feasible to accommodate increased tanker traffic at the Port of Vancouver.

The second alternative, building a pipeline along another route, is not promising. All of the environmental arguments against the NGP would apply to any pipeline proposal from northern Alberta to the Pacific. But one wonders if the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t? It is not impossible to imagine a pipeline that runs north to the Arctic Ocean. Currently this would be too dangerous a route for super tankers to navigate the sea ice that still persists throughout most of the year, but with climate change it is estimated the Northwest Passage could be permanently open within a decade, making access to Canada’s northern shores far more reasonable. Other countries have already started making grand plans for the Northwest Passage, as evidenced by Russia’s proposal for a trans-Arctic canal that could see as much tanker traffic as the Suez and Panama canals. It’s also probable that a pipeline to the Arctic would not illicit as much opposition: i) fewer First Nations groups would be affected, and those that would be are not as financially prosperous as many of their BC counterparts; ii) it would be foolish to underestimate the “out of sight, out of mind” reality of an Arctic pipeline-

It’s also interesting that in the preamble to Mr. Harper’s trip to China, there are reports that the Chinese will be pressing for a stake in the Arctic sovereignty negotiations that will inevitably play out among the Arctic Council nations. It is possible that China’s true interests lie in acquiring as many strategic resources globally as possible while their purchasing power is so strong; but it’s compelling that China has chosen to exploit a growing diplomatic relationship with Canada in obtaining a seat at the Arctic table.

The current federal government is determined to export Canadian crude to Asia. That crude needs a conduit to the coast, whether it is pipelines or railcars. The NGP debate will prove only a  single battle in the war for influence in Canada’s resource policy.

As much as the speech has drawn criticism for it’s patronizing tone, Harper’s comment is aptly appropriate in context of the Northern Gateway decision on the horizon. The proposed pipeline plan is not without pitfalls, but at its core is an idea with considerable merit: we can leverage the oil sands to keep the economy afloat during a period of widespread financial turmoil. But this potent, and potentially unifying fiscal argument has been lost amid a discussion riddled with red herrings and poor communication on behalf of the federal government.  Alternatively, the government has managed to polarize Canadians on either side of a debate that is becoming increasingly ideological and convoluted.

The transparent and ill-executed “Ethical Oil” campaign, championed by a roster of talking heads conspicuously affiliated with the federal Conservatives, was a debacle from its inception. The effort lost all legitimacy following spokeswoman Kathryn Marshall’s disastrous appearance on CBC’s Powers and Politics, in which she refused to answer relentless questioning about Ethical Oil’s financial backers. The entire campaign only fueled distrust among the public. Compound this with the now infamous list of friends and adversaries in the pipeline battle; revelations about Harper’s long-time commitment to tapping Chinese markets (along with a recently confirmed upcoming trip in February); public statements by the PM himself and Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver employing incendiary language to describe environmental groups and the result is the distinctly un-Canadian paranoid stalemate we are witnessing now.

An especially baffling aspect of the federal governments attempts to garner public support for the NGP is their shortsightedness in addressing First Nations stakes. It is unwise to further alienate a demographic that could hold the key to long-term energy developments and economic stability. This is especially true in British Columbia, a province home to over 200 distinct First Nations, fifty of which are directly involved in the Enbridge negotiations.

These First Nations are preparing to challenge Enbridge in the courts, citing a lack of consultation in the pipeline’s planning process as a breach of their right to early and transparent consultation in developments on traditional territory. As noted in the Vancouver Sun, no such precedent exists to guide the outcome, and thus it is a case that could drastically change the balance of power in resource development should the courts side with BC’s First Nations.

It’s also important to consider that no colonial treaties were ever signed on mainland British Columbia, and thus aboriginal land title is alive and well. This also means that every natural resource in BC is technically on unceded aboriginal land. Hypothetically, the court challenge could lead to the Supreme Court having to more clearly define just what land title really means (a definition that has been elusive to date); if it goes that far, then the Harper government and Enbridge have made a powerful enemy of a potential ally. If it goes all the way to the SCC, the decision would have reverberations across Canada.

If Harper really hopes to reduce regulatory delays on development projects, as he also stated in his WEF address, his government has antagonized a growing coalition of First Nations that could alter the fate of Canada’s energy landscape in the long-term. If the feds are smart, they should be courting First Nations leaders and negotiating how to make sure there is mutual benefits in pipeline and resource development, rather than propagating the defensive posture that led us to this point in the first place. Without a progressive working relationship with First Nations, particularly in BC, there can no certainty in our energy future.

Many Cambodians live with only basic necessities, as evidenced by this picture taken in Siem Reap in early 2010.

The tribunal was established in 2006 after almost a decade of negotiations between the United Nations (UN) and Cambodia’s government. It seeks to achieve justice for the approximately 1.7 million people who perished from starvation, forced labour and torture during the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979.

But now the court established to move the country forward has no money to pay its Cambodian employees. Staff were previously paid through international donations, but funds dwindled as the trials dragged on. The UN is only responsible for paying international employees, so Cambodians are forced to wait or quit their jobs. But finding more money in a weakened global economy won’t be easy.

Khmer Rouge members set the country back decades by killing intellectuals and decimating the professional population. Their quest to create an agrarian, peasant society left the country impoverished and uneducated. Some 30 per cent of Cambodians live below the national poverty line, according to World Bank statistics. The ECCC offered steady employment until funds ran out. Consequently, Cambodians likely do not want to quit their jobs.

Khmer Rouge victims, many of whom were children, pictured at S-21. Photo was taken in early 2010.

Cambodians supported the trying of Khmer Rouge leaders because they wanted peace in order to forget their country’s history. However, funding problems have divided the Cambodian and international sides of the court. The UN originally insisted on a mixture of staff to safeguard against potential corruption. Now, the court itself has become a display of inequality.

Cambodia’s retired King Norodom Sihanouk opposed the tribunal during early negotiations, saying, “Its budget would be better spent on alleviating poverty.” Indeed, six years later, the tribunal contributes to Cambodia’s poverty by forcing almost 300 people to work without pay.

The Japanese government donated $2.925 million to the courts in November. But that money was provided to “support the judicial process of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,” according to the ECCC’s website. Cambodian workers will not be paid using these funds.

So the court has compromised its reputation over yet another administrative issue. First, judges quit; then evidence was rejected and contested; now, funds are limited. This newest snag not only questions the tribunal’s ability to bring justice to Cambodia; it questions the justness of the tribunal process.