During the 1970s, Iran’s relationships across Africa developed, both in terms of the number of ambassadors accredited to African countries, and in terms of the volume of trade and extent of political dialogue. At the beginning of the decade, Iran had diplomatic relations with just five countries in the whole of Africa – Algeria, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia – but by the middle of the 1970s it had established formal ties with over thirty-five nations. This chapter investigates the nature of Iran’s diplomacy in Africa and why it was so successful during the 1970s. It questions why the shah was appealing to the independent states of Africa, and what strategies the regime employed to project an image of the shah as the leader of a country that had historically been an important global power and a civilising force in the world, and which aspired to continue to influence world affairs in a positive way. At the same time, after the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971, the shah sought to expand Iran’s sphere of influence beyond its immediate neighbourhood towards the Indian Ocean.

Menelaos, king of Homeric Sparta, was something the Dorian Spartans of the Archaic period could never hope to be: a Peloponnesian and a Spartan even before the Trojan War. He was believed to have descended, through his father, Atreus, from the eponymous Pelops and Hippodamia (and through his mother, Aerope, from either Minos or Lykaon). Thus he stood in sharp contrast to the ’real’ Spartans, who thought of their national history as having begun only with the Return of the Herakleidai. Reaching back to Menelaos through myth and cult was probably for the historical Spartans a response to the challenge both of their national youthfulness and of their relatively brief and recent possession of their country. Reaching back to mythic-historical times could, of course, only go so far. Greek tradition and the Homeric epic were too explicit and too widely disseminated to permit a direct linkage: Menelaos was clearly dissociated in time from the later Spartans. He was neither the founder of the Spartan state nor a progenitor of great Spartan families, nor even the mythical founder of any Spartan colony. Kleomenes’ exceptional contention that he was an Achaean, not a Dorian, was as far as one could possibly go. But Menelaos was no Herakleid either.

With a focus on the African Union, this chapter examines the Security Council’s practices when interacting with regional organisations in collaborative peace operations. The Security Council plays a critical role in two ways: (i) it identifies security threats and the required responses, and it authorises UN missions to deal with them; and (ii) it determines the role, if any, to be played by regional organisations and authorises the action they can take to address threats to peace in their regions. Africa is both the site of conflicts that have necessitated UN peace operations or the Council’s authorisation of enforcement actions, as in Libya in 2011, and home to that regional organisation which has engaged the most with the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security. The overarching argument of this chapter is that – notwithstanding changes in the post-Cold-War international political landscape and the rise of other voices from the periphery – the status of the Security Council as custodian of the collective security system remains undiminished. Its centrality and primacy have not been challenged or usurped by the African Union or other regional organisations.

This chapter opens up space for rethinking the experiences, economies and governance of mobile life. It sheds light on aspects of comparison between migrants’ experiences in the fragmented context of Libya and in Malta’s legal framework, enabled through the book’s unique analytic of the journey. Journeys foster novel understandings of the intersections between economy and unauthorized migration, encapsulated by the concept of mobility economies. The ethnographic and analytical insights of the book furnish a new anthropology of mobility and economic life.

Migrants’ journeys are often characterized by immobility and waiting. This chapter describes the experiences of migrants at a house in Libya as they prepare to take a boat to Europe. Furthering analyses of mobility economies, it brings economy into conversation with questions of time and immobility. The chapter reveals how a clandestine economy surrounding mobility intersects with intimate economies that reproduce the mobile body.

Confinement is a prominent feature of migrants’ journeys through Libya and onwards to Europe. Turning to migrants’ experiences in informal sites of confinement and in government-run detention centres in Libya, this chapter foregrounds how forced immobility is a crucial part of processes extracting value from migrants’ lives. Through a dynamic I call ‘accumulation by immobilization,’ the chapter reveals how peoples’ mobilities become a locus for generating value.

This chapter highlights that not all journeys are linear. It turns to the lives of migrants who decide to stay in Libya rather than move onwards to Europe. The chapter foregrounds how migrants navigate informal bordering practices enacted by a range of different actors. It offers a novel analysis of affective labour, as a labour of endurance and coping, and reveals how it plays a pivotal role in the making of peoples’ mobilities.

How might we characterize the unauthorized journeys of migrants from countries in Eastern and Western Africa as they make their way to or through Libya to Europe? This chapter front stages the journey as an analytic for understanding contemporary migration. It outlines what is at stake when the lived experiences of migration and migrants’ lives are brought into conversation with biopolitics and political economy. It highlights the concept of ‘mobility economies’ as a means for recasting analyses of migration and economic arrangements under contemporary capitalism.

The Mediterranean boat crossing highlights vulnerability and risk along migrants’ unauthorized journeys. This chapter attends to migrants’ experiences of taking a boat from Libya to Europe. The chapter enlivens affective and meteorological dimensions of the crossing to show how they configure mobilities and peoples’ futures. It provides a unique insight into unauthorized migration and its intersections with affect and atmospheres.

The International Criminal Court seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes, in order to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on the domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC, through its expressive function, is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims and it does not necessarily correspond with affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in law.

Chapter 7 discusses the societal impact of Court on the affected communities, known as demonstration effect. Different elements are important to “demonstration effect,” including (1) whether the Court is perceived as impartial in a specific context, (2) whether the ICC’s interventions are perceived as relevant and responsive to local communities and their justice struggles, (3) whether the Court is viewed as a legitimate justice institution, and (4) whether it is perceived as independent. Relying on qualitative data, the chapter seeks identify trends in perceptions in Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and Uganda. The chapter concludes that the Court suffers from negative perceptions in all four countries. In Uganda and Libya, its failure to prosecute actors from different sides contributes to an impression that it is not impartial. In Afghanistan or Libya, it is perceived as Western-influenced and not independent. In different contexts including Afghanistan, Uganda, and Colombia, it was perceived as an external imposition, and not aligned with local justice priorities arising from many decades of conflict. The architecture of the Court, with limited capacity to conduct preliminary examinations to better contextualize its interventions, limited field offices and little outreach, hinders effectively addressing these negative perceptions.

The International Criminal Court seeks to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes, in order to contribute to their prevention. But what is its impact to date? This book takes an in-depth look at four countries under scrutiny of the ICC: Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya and Uganda. It puts forward an analytical framework to assess the impact of the ICC on four levels: on the domestic legal systems (systemic effect); on peace negotiations and agreements (transformative effect); on victims (reparative effect); and on the perceptions of affected populations (demonstration effect). It concludes that the ICC, through its expressive function, is having a normative impact on domestic legal systems and peace agreements, but it has brought little reparative justice for victims and it does not necessarily correspond with affected populations view justice priorities. The book concludes that justice for the world’s worst crimes has no “universal formula” that can easily be captured in law.

Chapter 3 further expands on systemic effect and argues that impact of the Rome Statute on domestic legal systems is better described as “internalization.” Internalization is the process whereby states demonstrate compliance with international law. The chapter examines internalization in Afghanistan, Colombia, Libya, and Uganda. Indicators of systemic effect, in the form of internalization, include implementation of domestic laws covering the Rome Statute crimes; the establishment of new or specialized investigative units or chambers to investigate or prosecute Rome Statute crime; or (genuine) national proceedings for Rome Statute crimes. The chapter concludes that “internalization” is taking place in all the countries under study. Laws have been amended, and new institutions established. National proceedings took place in all four countries. However, domestic proceedings in Colombia and Uganda demonstrate that it can be complex to assess for “genuineness.” In fact, most domestic proceedings are taking place in Colombia, a country with a robust legal system. This may mean that the Court has the most impact where it is needed the least.

Chapter 4 discusses transformative effect, that is, the impact of the Rome Statute and the Court on political processes such as peace negotiations, in order to contribute to ending impunity. The chapter discusses the mechanisms of the Rome Statute that seek to balance peace and justice, including Articles 16 and 53 (the “interests of justice” test). It also discusses who determines the interests of victims in peace and justice. The evidence on whether arrest warrants facilitate or hinder peace negotiations is not conclusive, although in Uganda, they may have hindered reaching a final peace agreement. Moreover, in Afghanistan or Libya, amnesties were passed, in spite of the involvement of the ICC. The coming into force of the Rome Statute does not constitute a “paradigm shift” from impunity to accountability as such, but transformative effect may be seen in certain negotiations or peace agreements.