Audacity of Hope: International Criminal Law, Mass Atrocity Crimes, and Prevention

2015 ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Sheri P. Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Audacity Of Hope

Responsibility to Protect in International Criminal Law

Postgenocide ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Jobair Alam
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Foundations

This chapter considers the worst contemporary state-led prosecution of a minority group, which amounts to genocide, namely the Rohingya. It examines the atrocity crimes committed against them under international criminal law (ICL) and the application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thereupon. It suggests that such atrocities are constitutive of violations of jus cogens which warrants obligatio erga omnes. Accordingly, the perpetrators can be brought to justice under inter/national and universal jurisdictions, which, nonetheless, has not yet occurred. Given the failure of ICL mechanisms, the normative foundations of the R2P can provide valuable tools for intercepting mass atrocity crimes. The Rohingya—who face direct and structural violence at the hands of the Myanmar state—need protection from these crimes. The chapter explains how insular national politics can undo the gains made by the international community in upholding the distinctiveness of humanitarian claims through the application of the R2P.

s.V Modalities, Ch.21 From Machinery to Motivation: The Lost Legacy of Criminal Organizations Liability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saira
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Missed Opportunity

This chapter considers the lost legacy of the concept of criminal organizations in international criminal law. When the notion of declaring the criminality of organizations, in addition to determining the guilt of individuals, was first proposed in anticipation of the trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, organizational criminality was viewed as an opportunity both to recognize the role of organizations in nurturing mass criminality and to facilitate the prosecution of masses of individuals. But by the time the Tribunal was in operation, the first of these goals had faded away, and organizational criminality represented nothing more than a tool to accomplish individual criminality. This chapter argues that treating criminal organizations as a means to secure individual criminal liability represents a loss, a missed opportunity, in international criminal law. The condemnation of organizations that can attend organizational liability could have created within international criminal law an opportunity to expose the role of organizations in the perpetration of mass atrocity, to call attention to and analyze the institutionalized nature of mass atrocity crimes, which makes these crimes not only unthinkably destructive, but also inherently and importantly distinct from criminal wrongdoing in which a person’s conduct diverges from the standards of most of society. The missed opportunity of abandoning criminal organizations liability is particularly acute, this chapter contends, in light of the research in the decades since Nuremberg establishing how organizations affect individual behaviour. With greater understanding about the mechanisms for individuals’ desire to conform with peers, to obey authorities, and to rationalize their own actions, we can now see that organizations contribute to individuals’ decisions to commit crimes by providing forums and creating environments in which individuals come to believe that criminal behaviour is necessary or normal or even good, or in which individuals fail to recognize their own part in a criminal system. The organizations thus provide not only the machinery for atrocity, but also the motivation. By abandoning the substantive core of criminal organizations, international criminal law fails to identify the foundational role of organizations in creating mass atrocity crimes.

scholarly journals The End of Impunity? Global Law-Making and Atrocity Crimes / Den Kreislauf der Straflosigkeit durchbrechen: Internationales Strafrecht und Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Karstedt
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Binding Power ◽  
Global Law

AbstractThere was nothing inevitable about the amazing development of international criminal law and justice institutions since the 1990s, and neither about the proliferation of international and domestic procedures to end im­punity for gross human rights violations and international crimes, in particular atrocity crimes. As socio-legal researchers engaged with the processes of global lawmaking in the arena of international criminal justice, thy found “recursive” cycles of lawmaking (Halliday 2009), which involved transnational and domestic politics and actors, and were driven by mechanisms resulting from structural characteristics of the global sphere, and the very nature of interna­tional law itself The article explores this development through the lens of three “constitutional moments ” and the diagnostic struggles and contestation of the legal and political concept of genocide. Finally it analyses the emerging power of international criminal law through the processes of commitment and compliance, deterrence and expressivism. In a surprising analogy to E.P. Thompson’s study of lawmaking in 18th centuy Britain, the self-binding power of law emerges as a decisive factor in international criminal lawmaking.

Move fast and break societies: the weaponisation of social media and options for accountability under international criminal law

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Raj Singh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
The Media ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

This article considers the application of international criminal law to the role of social media entities in fuelling atrocity crimes, and the legal theories that could be most valuable in fostering their accountability. While incitement of atrocity crimes is one way of framing social media's role in fomenting conflict, this paper argues that it may be more productive to conceptualise social media's role in atrocity crimes through the lens of complicity, drawing inspiration not from the media cases in international criminal law jurisprudence, but rather by evaluating the use of social media as a weapon, which, under certain circumstances, ought to face accountability under international criminal law.

The “Responsibility to Prevent”: An International Crimes Approach to the Prevention of Mass Atrocities

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Reike
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Criminological Perspective ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?In order to systematically examine this question, this article turns to literature from criminology. While the criminological perspective has so far been neglected in debates on RtoP, the prominent criminologists John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond argue vehemently that “criminology is crucially positioned to contribute understanding and direction to what the United Nations has mandated as the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ groups that are threatened with mass atrocities.” For the purpose of this article, the label “criminology” comprises domestic criminology, supranational criminology, and international criminal law. While insights from supranational criminology and international criminal law are directly applicable to international crimes, translating knowledge generated in relation to crimes at the domestic level to atrocity crimes at the international level is, of course, not without challenges. Reasoning by analogy is an important method in this regard, though given the anarchical nature of international society some analogies will inevitably be imperfect. The benefits of such an approach, if carefully employed, however, outweigh the risks.

Purpose-based or knowledge-based intention for collective wrongdoing in international criminal law?

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Kirsten J. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Mass Atrocity

AbstractDue to the distinct nature of international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity originating out of and contributing to the pervasive collective character of mass atrocity, the appropriate mens rea for individual commission of these crimes is difficult to pin down. The mens rea for these international crimes has been deliberated, disputed and inconsistently applied, leaving what it means for individuals to intend to commit crimes of mass atrocity mired in confusion. This paper explores the meaning of intentional commission of collective crime, and demonstrates that from both philosophical and legal perspectives, acting intentionally in the context of mass atrocity can be interpreted in different ways, resulting in a condition of international criminal law which is at risk of unpredictability and expressive uncertainty. The paper endorses purpose-based, rather than knowledge-based, intent as the appropriate standard in the context of international crimes by arguing that mere knowledge of outcomes is insufficient.

From the Sentimental Story of the State to the Verbrecherstaat, Or, the Rise of the Atrocity Paradigm

2019 ◽  
pp. 54-71
Author(s):  
Lawrence Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
The State ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Law ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Effects Of Violence

By the terms of the ‘sentimental story of the state’ fashioned by thinkers such as Hobbes, the state represented the greatest bulwark against the disordering effects of violence, and obedience to the law represented the supreme virtue of the pacified citizenry. Nazi Germany fundamentally upset the sentimental story; in the parlance of Karl Jaspers, Nazi Germany was a Verbrecherstaat, a criminal state. The Nuremberg trial treated aggression as the paradigmatic crime of the criminal state; subsequent developments in international criminal law view acts of atrocity—crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes—as the paradigmatic state crimes. In this chapter, it is argued that this shift—from treating aggression to treating acts of atrocity as the paradigmatic state-sponsored crimes—has unsettled basic legal categories, such as the criminal/enemy dyad and the distinction between policing and war-making. The unsettling of these categories leaves, the chapter argues, international criminal law in a vexed state.

Conflict Prevention and R2P

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Reike
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Subsequent Research ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines how the agenda of prevention of armed conflict relates to the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P). While R2P was originally assumed to be fully compatible with the goals and principles of traditional conflict prevention, subsequent research has disentangled the relationship between R2P and conflict prevention, arguing that conflict prevention is a necessary but not a sufficient component of atrocity prevention, and that atrocity prevention needs to include a strategy for deterring potential perpetrators. Recent scholarship has started to examine the implications of marrying R2P to international criminal law categories. What follows from R2P’s move to crimes is an individualization of the principle, as well as a shift towards partiality, intrusion, and coercion. This means that where a threat of atrocity crimes occurs in the context of armed conflict, it cannot simply be assumed that R2P and conflict prevention are pulling in the same direction.

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