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

This study is concerned with the relationship between witnesses testifying in the Special Court for Sierra Leone and their legal teams. Other research conducted with witnesses in international war crimes tribunals suggests that this relationship has a significant impact on the experience of such witnesses. A structured interview was administered to 171 witnesses who had testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Witnesses generally felt their lawyers' attitude towards them was extremely good. Emotional support and good preparation for testifying seem to be particularly important predictors of witnesses' relationship with their lawyers, as does the level of respect they felt they received from court staff. However, communication between witnesses and their legal teams after the testimony is over did not have a significant impact on witnesses' evaluations of their lawyers' attitude towards them.

Witnesses in the special court for Sierra Leone: The importance of the witness–lawyer relationship

Best practice recommendations for the protection and support of witnesses.

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

Although witnesses are indispensable to the operation and success of war crimes courts, little is known about their motivations for agreeing to testify. This article advances existing knowledge by drawing on findings from interviews conducted with 200 witnesses after they gave evidence in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Participants were asked to describe their reasons for testifying. Content analysis was used to examine the variety and frequency of responses. Overall, 18 conceptually distinct motivations were mentioned, with most witnesses reporting multiple motivations. The response given most frequently was 'to denounce wrongs committed against me during the war,' followed by 'to contribute to public knowledge about the war.' Desires for retributive justice (e.g., accountability, punishment), and to fulfill a moral duty to other victims, were each mentioned by approximately one in four witnesses. Other key motivations included establishing the truth and narrating their stories. Motivations differed by gender, age, victimization status, side (prosecution versus defense) and trial. The results support the idea that witnesses value the opportunity to publicly denounce atrocities committed against themselves and others. The findings point to both congruities and incongruities between the aims of witnesses and the goals of war crimes courts. Further, the findings suggest that there may be two broad, overarching aspects of the decision to testify: those that are primarily geared toward helping oneself and those that are primarily geared toward helping others. Pragmatically, the findings can enhance efforts to support witnesses in preparing for and completing their testimonies.

Why Testify? Witnesses’ Motivations for Giving Evidence in a War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone

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Witnesses in the special court for Sierra Leone: The importance of the witness–lawyer relationship

Best practice recommendations for the protection and support of witnesses.

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

Why Testify? Witnesses’ Motivations for Giving Evidence in a War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone