Hybrid Justice and the Rights of the Defence

2020 ◽  
pp. 251-264
Author(s):  
Dov Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Presumption Of Innocence ◽  
African Union ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
The Right ◽  
Institutional Representation

This chapter examines generally the issue of the position of the Defence in hybrid tribunals, more particularly at the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) before proposing those reflections on the role of the Defence within the international criminal justice project. When it comes to the EAC, it should be noted that the initial agreement and Statute of the Chambers signed in 2012 did not include any specific provision relating to an institutional representation of the Defence within the institution. However, in 2014, an addendum to the initial agreement was signed between Senegal and the African Union (AU) in order to create a Defence office within the EAC. The ambition of this addendum was clearly to promote the respect for the rights of the Defence at the African Chambers, as noted in the Preamble to the addendum, where the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence are reaffirmed as fundamental principles. The chapter then looks at the legal challenges faced by the Defence during the Hissène Habré trial and how they were dealt with by the Trial and Appeals Chamber.

scholarly journals Analysing the Future of International Criminal Justice in Africa: A Focus on the ICC

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Emily Ngolo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
African Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms

The International Criminal Court has generally a bad reputation in the African continent as a whole with hostile assertions by the African Union, that the court is nothing but a political tool for the powerful. The Court, plagued with numerous difficulties, has come under pressure to perform, with some doubting its viability. Created by the Rome Statute, and the parties therein governed by general treaty law, enforcement mechanisms of the court have been unsatisfactory at best and this has led to questions being asked as to its survival. There exists a pool of divergent views, in regard to the African Union and the International Criminal Court, in many of the crucial areas of international criminal justice. This paper seeks to find out just how true is the claim that the ICC is ‘dead’ is, and the implications of this in the future of the continent as regards international criminal justice. How important is it for us to preserve international criminal justice? Just how much of a role do states play in this revered area of law? Is its legal viability coming to an unfortunate premature end? What does this mean, then, for the victims of mass atrocities? This paper seeks to show an interplay of the role of states and politics in international criminal justice, and determine then, whether there exists any bright future for this area of law in Africa.

scholarly journals Expressing what? The stigmatization of the defendant and the ICC’s institutional interests in the Ongwen case

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Liana Georgieva Minkova
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Operation Risk ◽  
International Criminal Trials ◽  
Empirical Contribution ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract The potential of international criminal trials to express the wrongfulness of mass atrocities and instil norms of appropriate behaviour within communities has been subject to a lively theoretical debate. This article makes an important empirical contribution by examining the limitations to the expressivist aspiration of international criminal justice in the context of the message communicated by the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (ICC-OTP) in the Ongwen case. A detailed analysis of the selection of charges, modes of liability, and the overall presentation of the Prosecutor’s arguments at trial suggests that the ICC-OTP’s limited capabilities to apprehend suspects and its dependency on state co-operation risk the excessive stigmatization of the few defendants available for trial for the purpose of demonstrating the Court’s capability of prosecuting notorious criminals. As the only apprehended commander from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Dominic Ongwen has been presented by the ICC-OTP as the ‘cause’ of crimes committed in Northern Uganda without due regard for the degree of his alleged involvement in those crimes compared to other LRA commanders, the role of other actors in the conflict, or the significance of his own victimization as a child. Ongwen’s excessive stigmatization expressed the importance of the Ugandan investigation after a decade of showing no results. Yet, it also produced a simplistic narrative which failed to express the complexity of violence in Northern Uganda.

Israel’s Unwillingness? The Follow-Up Investigations to the UN Gaza Conflict Report and International Criminal Justice

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 905-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Azarov ◽  
Sharon Weill
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Complementarity Principle ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Recent Developments

Following Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’, the UN called upon the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to conduct investigations and prosecutions of international crimes in accordance with international standards. The measures that the Israeli authorities undertook, when carefully examined, fall short of international standards. When examined under the lens of the admissibility criteria of the complementarity principle under Article 17 of the ICC Statute, this deficient practice emerges as part of a broader policy intended to shield perpetrators and maintain a climate of impunity for those committing international crimes. The need to find alternative avenues to provide victims with access to justice calls for an interrogation of the role of international criminal justice mechanisms, such as the ICC, in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This article examines recent developments concerning Israel’s investigations under the criteria set out by the complementarity principle.

scholarly journals The Role of International Criminal Justice in Fulfillment of the Tasks of the World Community - UN

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-96
Author(s):  
N I Kostenko
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
World Community ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
The World

The article examines the role of international criminal justice in fulfilling the important tasks set by the world community in the 21st century to stabilize the criminal justice system, which should become a fundamental element of the rule of law structure; on the recognition of the central role of the criminal justice system in the development of international criminal justice. The work focuses on the need for a holistic approach to reforming the criminal justice system in order to improve the effectiveness of international criminal justice systems in the fight against crime.

The African Union, the Security Council, and the International Criminal Court

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Chernor Jalloh
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
African Union ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of

This chapter analyses the controversies surrounding the work of the African Union, the Security Council, and the International Criminal Court. It examines whether the legal justifications offered for the Security Council’s involvement in matters of international criminal justice, as administered by the ICC, match the emerging practice. The chapter reviews the drafting history of the Rome Statute to identify the initial benchmark against which to assess the Chapter VII referral and deferral resolutions and their impacts, if any, on the world’s only permanent international penal tribunal. The chapter situates the ICC within a new post-Cold War global paradigm that is not only concerned with ensuring the collective peace, which is the classical responsibility of the UN, but also ensures that international criminal justice is meted out to at least some of the leaders who foment the world’s worst atrocities.

Monetary Compensation as a Remedy for Fair Trial Violations under International Criminal Law

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yahli Shereshevsky
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Monetary Compensation ◽  
Effective Remedy ◽  
The Right

When international criminal courts face violations of the right to a fair trial, they encounter a dilemma: if they provide a significant remedy, such as a stay of proceedings, the remedy inevitably undermines the ability to punish the perpetrators of international crimes; on the other hand, if they grant a minimal remedy or no remedy at all, the right to a fair trial is undermined. This dilemma has led to the adoption of an interest-balancing approach to remedies. Under this approach, sentence reduction plays a prominent role in remedying fair trial violations that do not undermine the court’s ability to accurately determine the accused’s guilt. This Article argues that sentence reduction is an inadequate remedy, since it inevitably either harms the goals of international criminal sentencing or does not provide an effective remedy for violations of the right to a fair trial. Instead, monetary compensation should be the remedy for such violations. By granting monetary compensation, the court creates a separation between the punishment and the remedy and thus can usually provide an effective remedy for the accused without harming the main goals of international criminal justice.

Substituting International Criminal Justice for an African Criminal Justice?

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos D Magliveras
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Added Value ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
African Union ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
The One

This article examines the reasons and the grounds behind the antiparathesis between the African Union and several of its Member States, on the one hand, and international criminal justice and the International Criminal Court (‘icc’), on the other hand. It also examines the consequences of and responses to this antiparathesis, including the creation of an International Criminal Law Section to the African Court of Justice and Human Rights and questions whether it offers any added value. The article concludes with suggesting the setting up of icc regional/circuit chambers, each dealing with a specific continent/region, as a means to restructure the icc, to make it more relevant to its users, namely the contracting parties to the Rome Statute, and to allay fears of politically motivated prosecutions.

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