February 13, 2009 Volume: 155 Issue: 31
Work on genocide earns Stockholm Prize
By Jerry Crimmins
Law Bulletin staff writer
A professor at Northwestern University School of Law who is also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation has won the 2009 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his research on genocide in Darfur and the Balkans.
John L. Hagan, 63, is a co-winner along with Raul Zaffaroni of the Supreme Court of Argentina. Zaffaroni has worked to explain state-sponsored genocide and to propose prevention measures.
According to the Stockholmn Prize announcement, Hagan ''pioneered the application of advanced crime measurement techniques to the study of genocide,'' especially in the Darfur region of the Sudan.
Hagan's work and that of his colleagues ''produced evidence of murders in the hundreds of thousands'' in Darfur, ''between 200,000 and 400,000 homicides, over four times more than previous estimates,'' the prize announcement said.
''Their conclusions were reported in more than 100 newspapers worldwide, helping to transform public comprehension and the discussion of the tragedy in Darfur,'' it added.
''Hagan's team also showed there was substantial evidence of racial motivation in the killings and rapes, with little evidence of a strategic response to rebellion as claimed by Sudanese authorities,'' according to the announcement.
Hagan's estimate of the killings in Darfur also contradicted estimates by the World Health Organization and some of the those offered by the U.S. State Department that the killings in Darfur totaled only in the tens of thousands.
Hagan originally reported his estimate in the professional journal Criminology in 2005 and, with his co-author Alberto Palloni, in an article entitled ''Death in Darfur'' in Science magazine on Sept. 15, 2006.
Hagan is also the author, along with Wenona Rymond-Richmond of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, of a book just released this year, ''Darfur and the Crime of Genocide,'' published by Cambridge University Press.
The announcement of the Stockholm Prize came a only few days before the New York Times reported this week that judges of the International Criminal Court have decided to issue an arrest warrant because of the Darfur killings for Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan.
The court has said separately that the judges have not yet taken such action.
Asked whether he thought al-Bashir should be arrested, Hagan said, ''Yes, I think that would be a good thing. Of course, he's entitled to a proper defense and all standards of reasonable doubt. I think the evidence is strong and meets the standards appropriate at this time to issuing the warrant and confirming the prosecutor's indictment.''
Hagan's book says he based his estimates on the number of killings on raw data collected under ''hostile circumstances'' by a team led by Stefanie Frease of the Coalition for International Justice and Jonathan Howard, a research analyst with the U.S. State Department's Office of Research.
In 2004, their team interviewed 1,136 Darfur refugees in Chad, visiting 10 camps and nine settlements.
''They randomly selected a starting point in each camp or settlement and then, from within this designated sector, selected every 10th dwelling unit for interview,'' according to Hagan's book.
''They randomly chose one adult from each household for a personal interview, resulting in the 1,136 sampled households.''
Based on this raw data, Hagan and his colleagues did two different estimates of the number of killings in Darfur up to that point. Their ''lowest possible'' estimate, he said, was 200,000 killings. Their high estimate was 350,000 deaths and 50,000 people missing.
The State Department at one point had supported higher estimates of the Darfur killings, but Hagan said that, when he announced his results, the State Department was attempting to quell the violence through negotiations with Sudanese leaders. As part of the negotiations, the U.S. was downplaying the death total, Hagan said.
But Hagan said Chicago lawyer Richard S. Williamson, who is America's special envoy to the Sudan, apparently persuaded the Bush administration late last year to shift away from negotiations with the Sudanese and instead ''press the criminal justice track.''
Thus, the Bush administration said in November that it strongly supported the efforts to prosecute Sudanese leaders and would oppose any UN efforts to prevent the prosecution.
Also supporting Hagan's estimate of the extent of the killing in Darfur is that ''typically now the UN says'' the killings number in the neighborhood of 300,000, according to Hagan.
Hagan said the ''killings from attacks on villages'' in Darfur began to decline in mid- to late 2004, about the time that the International Criminal Court got involved in the matter.
But Sudanese forces and militias have continued to interfere with supplies for displaced people in refugee camps, Hagan said.
''The chief prosecutor has made a point of saying al-Bashir is accountable not just for attacks on villages in 2003 and 2004 but also for harassment of the people in the camps up to the present moment.''
At the American Bar Foundation, Hagan is co-director of the Center for Law and Globalization. At Northwestern, he is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law.