Time and the Visibility of Slow Atrocity Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Randle C. DeFalco
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Cumulative Effects ◽  
Selective Recognition ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Abstract This article explores the role of time in obfuscating the criminality of international crimes committed through the cumulative effects of various actions that, on their own, appear banal and seemingly non-criminal in nature. It demonstrates how assessments of individual culpability continue to predominantly focus on the identification of discrete transactions that are intuitively recognizable as criminal in nature. This approach helps perpetuate the obfuscation of the criminality of slow, unfamiliar atrocity processes lacking easily identifiable moments of criminality. The selective recognition of atrocity crimes in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period and post-independence Myanmar are analyzed as examples of this failure to recognize the criminality of international crimes committed through slow, attritive means.

scholarly journals Accessing Justice Through Victim Participation at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Yesberg
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
National Reconciliation

This article explores the role of victims in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) – the forum tasked with bringing leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice. Victims have been afforded broad participatory rights at the ECCC, including the opportunity to be joined as third parties to the trial. These innovations must be applauded. However, the role victims can play in the wider process of national reconciliation remains under-utilised. This article suggests that victim participation can be used to increase public accessibility to the trial to ensure proceedings occupy a more positive, and prominent space in Cambodia's healing process.

Technology as a Key Tool for the Prosecution of International Crimes: Lessons from Uganda

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Tonny Raymond Kirabira
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Digital Evidence ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Complementarity Approach

Abstract This article uses the context of Uganda to examine the role of technology in the prosecution of international crimes. It uses the International Criminal Court (icc)complementarity framework to analyse two cases — Dominic Ongwen and Thomas Kwoyelo, exploring a question — whether the use of technology enhances the icc’s positive complementarity approach? The article draws substantially from the review of empirical literature, qualitative interviews and the author’s work experiences at the two sites of justice - Uganda and The Hague. The article reveals a practical overlap between the two sites of justice in the use of digital evidence and witness protection. It is argued that use of technology enhances the criminal trial procedures, victims’ rights and the legitimacy of the courts. It is equally argued that the use of technology has the potential to enhance the icc’s complementarity approach. The article contributes to current debates about the role of technology in international criminal justice.

Embodied Inequalities

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Horton ◽  
Judith C. Barker
Keyword(s):  
Oral Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Social Epidemiology ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Cumulative Effects ◽  
Oral Disease ◽  
Policy Intervention

This chapter combines ethnographic and social epidemiological approaches to analyze the causes of Latino children’s high rates of oral disease as well as their cumulative effects. Social epidemiological approaches suggest the complex interplay of biology and social structure at multiple levels in creating health inequalities. How can we use ethnography to operationalize this model, illustrating the varying role of familial, clinical, and sociopolitical contexts in creating farmworker youths’ health inequalities? Moreover, how can social epidemiology heed the insights of ethnography, and what happens when we assign equal truth status to parents’ “local” knowledge and to expert knowledge of epidemiological reports? This chapter serves as a lens both for understanding the roots of farmworker children’s poor oral health and as a thought experiment for considering the provocative methodological and epistemological questions posed by an interdisciplinary dialogue on health inequalities. Using a life course perspective, we examine the way that farmworker young adults’ poor oral health feeds back into a system of social inequality. Using the lens of oral health, this chapter presents a vivid argument for why health inequalities are cause for policy intervention—that is, why they are a matter not only of fairness but also of equity and justice.

Studying Perpetrator Ideologies in Atrocity Crimes

2019 ◽  
pp. 175-191
Author(s):  
Jonathan Leader Maynard
Keyword(s):  
Actual Role ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Scholarly and public commentators frequently discuss the ideological backdrop of atrocity crimes, yet the actual role of ideology in such campaigns of violence remains a key source of disagreement between scholars. This chapter first briefly discusses the variation in contemporary theoretical perspectives on ideology’s relevance to the perpetration of atrocity crimes, and identifies some key shortcomings in most prevailing accounts. It presents the author’s ‘neo-ideological’ approach, which emphasizes ideology’s key role, but departs from some of the cruder, vaguer, or more compartmentalized characterizations of that role found in many existing accounts. It contends that the neo-ideological approach integrates a broad range of key findings from contemporary research on mass atrocities, and explicates the explanatory significance of ideology in the behaviour of various types of perpetrators. It illustrates the plausibility and value of the approach by briefly applying it to the case of the Stalinist Great Terror of 1936–1938.

Part VI Impact, ‘Legacy’, and Lessons Learned, 47 The Deterrent Effect of the ICC on the Commission of International Crimes by Government Leaders

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grono Nick ◽  
Wheeler Anna de Courcy
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Policy Options ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

This Chapter examines in which circumstances, and under what conditions, the prospect of prosecution by the ICC may act to curtail the actions of government or rebel leaders by shifting the strategic calculus in favour of avoiding war crimes or crimes against humanity. It studies ICC engagement and its impact in Uganda, the DRC, Colombia, Sudan, Kenya, and Mali. It argues that success or failure of ICC deterrence rests to a large degree on its ability to pursue successful prosecutions. It concludes that potential to deter future atrocity crimes may not exist in all cases, and probably not in the midst of armed conflict, but could exist in those situations where the commission of crimes is one of a series of policy options available to a leader facing a challenge to his or her authority.

The role of political leaders in mitigating the risk of mass atrocities: an analysis of Khama, Kaunda and Nyerere

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
General Question ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Genocide Studies ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Structural Risk ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines the impact that three political leaders—Seretse Khama, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere—had on navigating the long-term risk associated with mass atrocities. While the scholarship on comparative genocide studies has acknowledged the crucial dimension of leadership in the perpetration of such violence, very little is known about the preventive influence of leaders in cases where risk is present. This influence works both ways: the ideas, decisions and policies of political leaders are often the most instrumental factor in effective processes of risk mitigation. Yet to date, there has been no systematic study of the role of leadership in managing and ameliorating risk associated with mass atrocities. Indeed, the more general question of why mass atrocities do not occur is also largely neglected. I argue that these leaders were cognisant of the disruptive potential of tribal, ethnic and religious division; they advocated for inclusive national identities and developed policies that fostered social cohesion; and were effective in creating social and political environments that had an inhibitory effect on structural risk factors associated with atrocity crimes.

Sexist Microaggressions: Traumatic Stressors Mediated by Self-Compassion

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-137
Author(s):  
Marcus A. Cherry ◽  
Melanie M. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Prolonged Exposure ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Cumulative Effects ◽  
Trauma Symptoms ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Internalized Misogyny ◽  
Traumatic Stressors

Women regularly endure sexist microaggressions, which are often associated with anger, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and trauma. The cumulative effects of sexist microaggressions may result in internalized sexism and undermine self-compassion. Notably, prolonged exposure to sexism is associated with trauma symptoms; however, the traumatic effects of sexist microaggressions have remained largely theoretical. Thus, we examined the role of sexist microaggressions as a traumatic stressor and evaluated self-compassion and internalized misogyny as mediators of sexism-based traumatic stress. With a sample of 370 adult cisgender women, results suggested that sexist microaggressions significantly and positively predicted trauma symptomology, and that this relationship was partially mediated by self-compassion but not internalized misogyny. Results supported sexism as a traumatic stressor, and low self-compassion as a mechanism through which sexist microaggressions result in traumatic stress. We discuss implications for research and practice.

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.

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