This chapter asks whether victims have a ‘right’ to the truth, and if they do, whether international trials are the appropriate vehicle for vindicating that right. Many have argued for a limited role for international criminal trials, focused exclusively on the fate of individual defendants, while others seek to subordinate criminal trials to larger, historiographic goals of constructing a definitive record of atrocities and other violations. The chapter reframes these debates around the concept of ‘victim rights’, especially since the Rome Statute provides a privileged place for victims in the procedural mechanics of the International Criminal Court. The argument here is then developed through discussion of four areas of doctrine: the victims’ ‘personal interests’ in the determination of guilt, the recharacterization of charges against the defendant, the right of victims to introduce evidence, and victims’ obligation to disclose exonerating evidence. The chapter concludes that these developments, combined with the role of human rights law, has ushered in an ‘emerging truth regime’.
A Sophisticated Beast? On the Construction of an ‘Ideal’ Perpetrator in the Opening Statements of International Criminal Trials
