Psycho-Social Aspects Surrounding Criminal Investigations into Mass Graves

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Klinkner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Forensic Investigations

In the context of transitional justice, forensic investigations into mass graves aim to respond to the humanitarian needs arising from human rights’ violations or to satisfy legal, evidentiary requirements. Whilst victims are cited as the main rationale behind international criminal justice, the actual investigative and prosecution procedures may not focus on the psycho-social ramification these activities have for survivors. This becomes particularly evident when considering forensic investigations of mass graves. Anchored in the transitional justice framework, the article identifies and examines issues surrounding excavations such as 1) religion, culture and commemoration; 2) history, revisionism and demystification; 3) identification; and the 4) impact on the domestic judiciary and capacity-building within the Cambodian and Yugoslavian context. Finally the article asks whether it is the duty of investigations to take psycho-social factors into account when embarking on forensic missions.

From Moral Entrepreneurs to Moral Advocates

2019 ◽  
pp. 98-124
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Sociology Of Punishment ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

A sociology of punishment for international criminal justice enables attention to the norms, morals, and values at play in the motivational dynamics of penal reforms. At the same time, these cultural forces must be analysed against the background of social organization and structure, indeed, as to what enables people to think and feel in certain ways and to promote policies in accordance with their sensibilities. As such, this chapter explores international criminal justice as a field replete with cosmopolitan sensibilities, but also of lifestyles, qualifications, and restraints. Finding that international criminal justice is perceived as a cosmopolitan expression of social justice, the first part conceptualizes human rights NGOs working in international criminal justice as global moral entrepreneurs and shows how they use humanist discourses to promote global justice-making through law, turning them into advocates of international criminal justice. Balancing claims to authority in the field, the NGOs have to navigate between being ‘insiders’ as experts and ‘outsiders’ that can claim moral authority. The analysis draws on scholarship inspired by Bourdieu and is put to work on transnational fields, enabling attention to what is often downplayed in studies of international law, namely class. As such, the chapter inquires into whose imaginations of global justice become part of its materiality, finding that advocates of humanity predominantly belong to a class of transnational western professionals.

International Criminal Justice History Writing as Anachronism

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-89
Author(s):  
Frédéric Mégret
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Individual Accountability

This chapter focuses on the extent to which the contemporary project of international criminal justice cannot easily lay claim to what it imagines to be its past, because that past, despite superficial similarities, often exhibited fundamentally different concerns. It highlights three areas in which international criminal justice today is arguably dramatically different from how it was understood up to the 1990s. First, international criminal justice was for a long time much less obsessed with the criminalization of international law prohibitions specifically, and much more interested in the transnational dimensions of the criminal law. Second, it was much less committed to a strict model of individual accountability under international law and much more willing to see the state as the central pivot of international criminal responsibility. Third, it was intimately linked to peace projects whereas it has become intimately associated to the fight against atrocities and mass human rights violations.

scholarly journals Digital Dead Body Management (DDBM): Time to Think it Through

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Structural Difference ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Technology Sector ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
And Control ◽  
Digital Identities

Abstract Effective, safe and dignified dead body management (DBM) in the context of disasters, atrocities and wars has long been an important task—primarily for the humanitarian sector, but also for the human rights and international criminal justice community. How will the digitization of the human rights field and the adjacent spheres of humanitarian action and international criminal justice reshape ideas about death and the practices of care and control of the dead in the international space? To approach that question, the article coins the term ‘digital dead body management’ (DDBM) and offers an initial framing of this concept and some tentative pointers for a human rights research agenda. It focuses on the concept of ‘digital bodies’. Noting that the management of digital identities after death is becoming a significant governance challenge for the global technology sector, with thousands of ghost-accounts appearing every day, the article discusses the structural difference between how ‘digital deaths’ are dealt with in emergencies and in the marketplace, with a focus on DDBM as a problem of global equality. The article contributes to the critical conceptualization of DDBM by mapping a set of the tensions existing between the norms, objectives and operational approaches of humanitarian, human rights and international criminal justice practices and reflecting on where normative perils might arise in the context of digitization.

scholarly journals Penal welfarism ‘gone global’? Comparing international criminal justice to The Culture of Control

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Kjersti Lohne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
National Capacity ◽  
Penal Sanctions ◽  
Justice Studies ◽  
Late Modern

With the consolidation of a cosmopolitan field of international criminal justice, penality has ‘gone global’. In spite of the abundance of doctrinal legal analysis, human rights studies, and transitional justice studies, there are few analytic attempts to engage with the working assumptions, cultural commitments, and dominant mentalities that give shape to international criminal justice as a penal field. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews with key actors, and critical reading of international criminal justice scholarship, this article compares the cosmopolitan penality of international criminal justice to that of late modern, domestic, penality. Using David Garland’s The Culture of Control as an analytic yardstick, it argues that international criminal justice both resembles and departs from ‘the national’. For example, whilst the cosmopolitan penality relies upon retributive justifications, it makes no appeal to harsh penal sanctions; nor is it concerned with the rehabilitation of prisoners. Rather, it is an expressive and humanitarian form of justice where the victim takes central stage – as the embodiment of a suffering humanity. Moreover, there is a remarkable faith in the transformative effects of international criminal justice, resembling a form of penal welfarism ‘gone global’. As national capacity building and penal development has become intrinsic to the project of international criminal justice, the article shows how the global dimension of the power to punish is based on a moralization of politics.

Extent of Applicability of Human Rights Standards to Proceedings before the International Criminal Court: On Possible Reductive Factors

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Deprez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Present Article ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Human Rights Standards

Today, it is not seriously challenged that human rights law applies to proceedings before the International Criminal Court. The exact boundaries of this statement, however, might be less clear. The present article argues that the extent of applicability of human rights law cannot be precisely described unless the specific nature of the Court and of international criminal justice in general is taken into consideration. More concretely, it will be demonstrated that the exact scope of applicability of human rights standards to the ICC setting can only be addressed by referring to inherent characteristics (both of the Court and of the international criminal system as a whole) that could possibly bear a reductive impact on that scope. It will be argued throughout the analysis that several of these specific features are indeed capable of reducing the level of protection, while on a closer look others do not display such influence.

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