International criminal law has witnessed a rapid rise after the end of the Cold War. The United Nations refers to the birth of a new 'age of accountability', but certain historical objections, such as selectivity or victor's justice, have never fully gone away, and many of the justice dimensions of international criminal law remain unexplored. Various critiques have emerged in socio-legal scholarship or globalization discourse, revealing that there is a stark discrepancy between reality and expectation. Linking discussion of legal theories, case-law and practice to scholarship and opinion, A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law explores these critiques through five main themes at the heart of contemporary dilemmas:The shifting contours of criminality and international crimesThe tension between individual and collective responsibilityThe challenges of domestic, international, hybrid and regional justice institutionsThe foundations of justice proceduresApproaches towards punishment and reparationSuitable for students, academics and professionals from multiple fields wishing to understand contemporary theories, practices and critiques of international criminal law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law

Since the early 1990s, feminist interventions in international law have sought to make sexual violence in wartime more visible, punishable and preventable. This dissertation focuses on the experiences of workers and the development of feminist analysis in the Interdiocesan Recuperation of Historical Memory project (REMHI, 1994-1998) and the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH, 1997-1999), two truth-telling processes in Guatemala that operated during these broader historical shifts. Often considered silence-breakers on sexual and other violations in the 36-year internal armed conflict, these historically-grounded processes provide a unique perspective on feminist transitional justice work, and important insights for those facing similar issues elsewhere. Drawing on interviews, textual analysis and a range of secondary sources, my dissertation makes three key contributions. First, given persistent international failures to turn gender visibility into accountability, I propose the conceptual tools of ‘participatory rhetoric’ and ‘worstness’ to clarify the representational limitations of a perpetual focus on visibility and ‘silence-breaking.’ Discourses of participation and victim-centeredness often conceal continuing structural limitations to marginalised women’s analytical involvement in rights work. Such conditions tend to channel women’s testimony into narratives of ahistorical victimisation, diminishing the historical significance of women’s wartime experiences and muting their postwar political demands. Second, I shift the methodological gaze of research on sexual violence from the trauma of victims to the mediating practices of rights workers. I argue that ongoing feminist efforts to expose sexual violence in Guatemala have driven broader challenges to the gendered hierarchies and exhausting practices of objective knowledge production favoured in human rights work. Using a discursive approach to rights, I show through a range of practices that workers in ‘peripheral’ sites like Guatemala are key actors, knowledge producers and innovators whose creative contributions should be major case studies informing transitional justice. Third, I highlight the practical adaptations and intense emotional labour required to perform high stakes truth-telling work successfully. With empirical support from interviews, I propose the framework of ‘urgency praxis’ to better account for the limited representational possibilities, the naturalised divisions of labour and the exhaustion of social movements that are products of this race-against-time form of rights defense.

Urgency Praxis, Sexual Violence and Feminist Knowledge Production in Guatemalan Truth-Telling

This thesis examines transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), asking, what can the application of cognitive linguistic methods to ICTY transcripts reveal about social processes within the courtroom? Aiming to broaden the application of these methods, this thesis uses a type of cognitive linguistics called Discourse Space Theory (DST) to highlight significant patterns of interaction within ICTY testimonies, and a combination of social psychology and discourse analysis to explain them further. The multi-layered methods employed here allow for the transcripts to be at their most revealing, and provide essential connections to the existing body of work on transitional justice. This project examines two types of testimonies – that of victims, and that of accused. Results of this analysis demonstrate that underlying the exchanges at the ICTY are power relationships functioning in ways that change relative to identifiable sets of circumstances, such as the ways in which agents of the court address witnesses. Patterns revealed through the analysis of victim testimony demonstrate two important contested subjects at stake - memory and emotion. Analysis of accused testimony has shown a stronger focus on personal power, both within the courtroom and within narratives on the past, and demonstrates that this changes according to status and rank. The overall results of this study have shown that language in the courtroom not only contains within it evidence of underlying social processes, but that these processes reveal issues of power significant to the changing nature of how the functions of tribunals such as the ICTY are understood generally.

Transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: a linguistic interpretation of sociological patterns found in court data

After the Second World War, the Allies convened a major trial in Tokyo of 28 military and political leaders of the Japanese Empire. The Tokyo Tribunal, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), tried individuals for war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. Although the tribunal prosecuted and convicted defendants for the mass rapes of Chinese women during the 1937 invasion of Nanjing, the systematic sexual enslavement of ‘comfort women’ during the Asia-Pacific War was all but ignored by the Tokyo Tribunal (Askin, 1997; Henry, 2013).1 Up to 200,000 girls and women who were forced, coerced, tricked or lured into sexual servitude and slavery never saw ‘justice done’ in the aftermath of the war. Moreover, no persons were prosecuted for the crimes against approximately 100 Filipino women from the town of Mapanique who were raped after Japanese troops had castrated and burned alive the men and boys from the town.

The Law of the People

Scope and purpose:-

 Since the late 1980s, ‘transitional justice’ (TJ) principles and practices have gradually become normalised in international relations diplomacy and international development policy and yet we know very little about how transitional justice interventions are experienced locally, i.e. at the sub-state, community and individual level. This review sets out to examine and interrogate the extant literature on the local effects of transitional justice debates and processes.
 The review is discursive rather than conclusive and does not seek to impose a summary judgment on whether transitional justice ‘works’ or not. 

Methodology:-

 The evidence review uses a rigorous bibliographic search methodology to identify existing literature that includes ‘local-level’ empirical data. Three searches were conducted: a systematic database-driven search, a snowball search and a peer-led search. The literature yielded from the searches was ‘graded’ for evidential quality and quality of analysis using the Justice and Security Research Programme’s (JSRP) grading method. Shortcomings and limitations of the search methodology are explored. Download full annotated bibliography.

/pdf/local-understandings-and-experiences-of-transitional-justice-ih16lb4a5a.pdf

Local understandings and experiences of transitional justice: a review of the evidence

The research described in this article investigates the extent to which witnesses who testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) report the experience as positive or negative. It also seeks to identify the factors that contribute to these evaluations. It reports the results of structured interviews conducted with 171 witnesses who testified in the SCSL. The finding that emerges most strongly is that the experience of testifying was positive for the majority of witnesses. The courtroom environment was experienced as supportive, and witnesses rated the experiences of both examination-in-chief and cross-examination as being more positive than negative, with examination-in-chief being the more positive of the two. The findings suggest that a positive testimony experience can be predicted when a witness does not feel worried at the prospect of testifying, feels respected by court staff and, to a lesser extent, has a positive experience of cross-examination.

Testifying in an International War Crimes Tribunal: The Experience of Witnesses in the Special Court for Sierra Leone

Psychosocial staffat a war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone conducted interviews with 147 witnesses after they completed their testimony. The interviewers asked participants to describe the most positive and most difficult aspects of their experience of testifying. Responses were recorded, coded, and examined using content analysis. Nearly all witnesses reported both empowering and difficult aspects, but the former outnumbered the latter. Witnesses mentioned 35 conceptually distinct positive aspects and 26 conceptually distinct negative aspects. The most frequently mentioned positive aspect was "being given the chance to tell my story, being able to talk about difficult/painful experiences, breaking silence." The second most frequently mentioned positive aspect was "being listened to, feeling believed/understood." The most frequently mentioned negative aspect was "emotional difficulty with some questions, talking about painful experiences." The second most frequent response was "nothing was difficult." Victim witnesses portrayed the experience more positively than nonvictims. For many witnesses, despite some challenging components, testifying provided a valued opportunity.

The experience of testifying in a war-crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone

Interviews were conducted with 147 witnesses (109 men, 38 women) after they had testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a tribunal jointly established by the United Nations and the Sierra ...

Self-Reported Psychosocial Consequences of Testifying in a War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone

This paper describes the experience of those who have testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), particularly in terms of the impact on witness security and emotional welfare. The SCSL is an international war crimes tribunal located in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Testifying in such a court has the potential to negatively impact on witnesses' personal security, and their emotional, social and economic well-being. Therefore, the SCSL has a number of measures in place to protect witnesses, and to ensure they are not negatively affected by testifying. One hundred and seventy-one witnesses who had completed their testimony were interviewed. Their responses indicate that witnesses do not feel less safe as a result of their involvement with the SCSL, and that they become less worried as their familiarity with the Court and its processes increases. Aspects of the SCSL's work with witnesses that particularly contribute to their well-being are identified, along with aspects of the service which could be modified or improved.

Testifying in the Special Court for Sierra Leone: witness perceptions of safety and emotional welfare

This paper reports the findings of an interview study of 144 victim-witnesses who testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Witnesses expressed satisfaction with the preparation they received for testifying from their lawyers, particularly appreciating emotional support, as well as practical preparations. Victim-witnesses generally evaluated their interactions with all court staff positively, and reported feeling well-treated by the Court. The experience of cross-examination was difficult for a large proportion of witnesses in the current study, but an even larger group of witnesses reported the experience to be positive. For some witnesses, the experience of successfully coping with the challenge of cross-examination may be empowering. The feelings reportedly experienced by witnesses during their testimony are similarly mixed: a large proportion reported painful feelings, but others reported feeling confident, relieved and happy when they testified. The importance of continued post-testimon...

/pdf/the-victim-witness-experience-in-the-special-court-for-1u0cn57ggj.pdf

The victim-witness experience in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

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