Investigating Crimes against Humanity in Syria and Iraq: The Commission for International Justice and Accountability

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Rankin
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International System ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The United Nations

The failure of the United Nations to effect a ‘responsibility to protect’ in Syria and Iraq has provoked acrimonious debates over how the international community should respond to mass atrocities in the contemporary international order. Moreover, the fact that the International Criminal Court and other United Nations (un) agencies remain unable to investigate in Syria and Iraq, has reinvigorated debate on the mechanisms available to bring those most responsible for humanities gravest crimes to account. This article examines the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (cija). As non-state actors, cija conduct their investigations outside the United Nations system, with the aim of investigating and preparing case briefs for the most senior leaders suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria; and war crimes, crimes against humanity and allegations of genocide in Iraq. This article argues that in preparing case briefs for individual criminal liability for a future prosecution, cija have attempted to extend the system of international criminal law, and in so doing, pose a challenge to traditional notions of the state in relation to the concept of war and the law, and the relationship between power and law in the international system. The article concludes by the asking the question: does the international community have a ‘responsibility to prosecute’ those suspected of criminal misconduct?

The Role of UN Documentation in Shaping Narratives at the International Criminal Court and the Implications for the Rights of the Accused

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Anne Herzberg
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Close Cooperation ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Primary Basis

Abstract The International Criminal Court (icc) is an independent treaty-based international organisation acting in close cooperation with the United Nations (UN). To that end, organs of the Court have extensively relied on UN documentation in proceedings. These materials have been used to support grounds for the exercise of jurisdiction, demonstrate legal elements of crimes, and prove matters of fact. In recent practice, including in the situations of Palestine, Bangladesh/Myanmar, and Mali, UN materials have been used to establish legal and factual matters on the primary basis that they represent the ‘views of the international community’. This paper examines the ways in which Court organs rely on UN documentation in icc proceedings. It assesses the interplay of such information with rights of the accused. The paper concludes that in order to safeguard its credibility and the fairness of the proceedings, the Court should adopt specific guidelines relating to the evaluation of and admissibility of UN materials.

Changing the Paradigm of International Criminal Law: Considering the Work of the United Nations War Crimes Commission of 1943–1948

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Plesch ◽  
Shanti Sattler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The United Nations

Abstract More than 2,000 international criminal trials were conducted at the end of World War II in addition to those held by the International Military Tribunals (IMTs) at Nuremburg and Tokyo. Fifteen national tribunals conducted these trials in conjunction with an international war crimes commission established by these same states in October 1943 under the name, The United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes, that soon became the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). The extensive work of the UNWCC and these tribunals serves as a source of customary international criminal law that relates directly to the current work of the International Criminal Court and the ad hoc tribunals in operation since the 1990s.

Part 4 Adjudication Within the United Nations System, 31 Criminal Tribunals Established by, or in Relationship with, the UN

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Higgins Dame Rosalyn, DBE, QC ◽  
Webb Philippa ◽  
Akande Dapo ◽  
Sivakumaran Sandesh ◽  
Sloan James
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
East Timor ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Nations System

This chapter covers criminal tribunals established by, or in relationship with, the United Nations (UN). It includes the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; the International Criminal Court; The Special Court for Sierra Leone; the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; the Special Tribunal for Lebanon; the Kosovo Regulation 64 Panels; the East Timor Special Panels for Serious Crimes; and the Bosnia and Herzegovina War Crimes Chamber. The chapter discusses the establishment and jurisdiction of each court or tribunal; its composition; its relationship with other bodies; resources and completion mechanisms; residual issue; and legacy.

scholarly journals ICC and Afrocentrism: The Laws, Politics and Biases in Global Criminal Justice

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Nwafor Ndubuisi ◽  
Mukoro Benjamin Onoriode
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
The Political

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. However, since its inception, the Court has been wholly focused on Africa in terms of indictments and trials. This has led many Africans, including state leaders, to question the integrity of the Court. While most explanations of the ICC’s focus on Africa have bordered on the political, this work attempts to find out the reason for the Court’s slant towards Africa in the very Statute by which it was established. Therefore, this paper finds that of the four broad crimes that the ICC has jurisdiction to try, three (crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide) are more likely to occur in Africa, while the fourth (the crime of aggression), will more likely be perpetrated by or at the instigation of individuals in powerful States.

scholarly journals ESTABLISHMENT AND ACTIVITIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: CHALLENGE FOR XXI CENTURY

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (70) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Jānis Grasis
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Member States ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Positive Step

Without any doubts, we have to recognize that the establishment of International Criminal Court (ICC) is positive step in international humanitarian and criminal law, in order to call to account persons, who has committed the most serious war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. The authority of the ICC internationally reduces the fact that United States of America and Russian Federation have not become member states of the ICC. The brief analysis of the court practice of the ICC proves that ICC acts according to the rule of law, taking into account its independent status. In order to improve legal proceedings of the ICC, we have to find innovative mechanisms in cooperation with bodies and institutions of the United Nations Organization, to push the Member states of the United Nations Organization to actively cooperate with ICC; for example – to execute orders of the arrest of the accused persons. The special treatment must be in cases, when Heads of the State has been accused.

Rape and Human Rights

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1662-1664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Franco
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
The United Nations

According to the report of the United Nations commission on Human Rights, rape is the least condemned war crime (coomaraswamy, Further Promotion 64n263). Although wartime rape was listed as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and by the Geneva Conventions, it was not until 2001 that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia identified rapists as war criminals. In that year the tribunal sentenced three men for violations of the laws or customs of war (torture, rape) and crimes against humanity (torture, rape) committed during the war in Bosnia during the 1993 takeover of Foca, where women were systematically raped and killed, the purpose being “to destroy an ethnic group by killing it, to prevent its reproduction or to disorganize it, removing it from its home soil.”

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