Jus Post Bellum and the Responsibility to Rebuild – Identifying the Contours of an Ever More Important Aspect of r2p

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-305
Author(s):  
Peter Hilpold

In the last years, the traditional dichotomy in international law between jus ad bellum and jus in bello has been more and more abandoned in favour of a system comprising also norms designed to create fair and sustainable peace. It has been recognized that post-war societies need help in order to avoid a relapse into conflict and chaos. But what is the essence of this jus post bellum? What are its sources? Did the introduction of a Responsibility to Protect (r2p) change the rather sceptical attitude by most governments towards peace-building activities that were often considered intrusive? Particular attention will be given to two recent post conflict countries, Kosovo and Libya, where the Responsibility to Rebuild was of considerable importance, but the State community only partially considered (Kosovo) or did not consider at all (Libya). In this contribution it will be shown that the contours of the jus post bellum are still rather unclear but that nevertheless it is very likely that this concept is here to stay.

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX J. BELLAMY

AbstractRecent years have seen a growing interest in questions about justice after war (jus post bellum), fuelled in large part by moral questions about coalition operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, it has become common to argue that jus post bellum is a third strand of Just War thinking. This article evaluates this position. It argues that that there are broadly two ways of understanding moral requirements after war: a minimalist position which holds that moral principles derived largely from jus ad bellum and jus in bello concerns should constrain what victors are entitled to do after war and a maximalist position which holds that victors acquire additional responsibilities that are grounded more in liberalism and international law than in Just War thinking. Finding problems with both approaches, the article argues that it is premature to include jus post bellum as a third element of Just War thinking and concludes by setting out six principles to guide future thinking in this area.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-430
Author(s):  
Lonneke Peperkamp

Many argue that the problems encountered in and after today’s armed conflicts demonstrate the need for norms to govern the aftermath of war. Therefore, jus post bellum is welcomed as a ‘new’ branch of just war theory, complementing the theory’s two traditional branches—jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Jus post bellum is meant to function as moral compass, offering the needed guidance in the aftermath of war. While many agree on the importance of a third branch, an important question is often overlooked: After war, how should we distribute post war duties? This question deserves more attention, because uncertainty about specific duty bearers might lead to a situation in which no one will properly acquit these duties, and the critique could be raised that jus post bellum is in fact merely empty rhetoric. Two specific questions need answering. First: Which conditions can serve as the foundation for post war duties? Second: How to weigh these conditions when they clash or when they point to different actors? This article directly addresses the foundation for responsibility after war, using David Miller’s and H.L.A. Hart’s theories on responsibility, with an eye to developing a system for assigning post war duties in concrete situations. Only with such a system in place is there a realistic prospect that jus post bellum functions as a useful tool in the creation of a just and stable peace.


Focaal ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (57) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marita Eastmond

This special section of Focaal explores processes of social recovery and peace-building in the aftermath of radical violence and political upheaval. The articles draw on detailed ethnographic case studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that was shattered by war and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, and raise issues of relevance to other post-conflict situations. Challenging “reconciliation” as a moral discourse with universalist claims, the articles highlight the dynamics of its localization in different contexts of intervention in post-war society. The four contributions explore different facets of this dynamic as it is played out in the key areas of justice, the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, and NGO peace-building activities. They illuminate what happens when the global paradigm of reconciliation encounters and filters through meanings and motivations of actors in local contexts. They also note that everyday interactions between former adversaries take place not as a moral engagement with reconciliation but as part of rebuilding a sense of normality. The findings point to the need to critically investigate the conditions under which such encounters may empower or prohibit the rebuilding of social relations and trust in post-war societies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine C. Sredl ◽  
Clifford J. Shultz ◽  
Ružica Brečić

Through this longitudinal study of a historically significant, complex, conflicted and evolving macromarketing space, Bosnia’s Arizona Market, the authors reveal that marketing systems are not merely random artifacts of human behavior; rather, they are adaptive, purposeful, can be pernicious and/or provisioning, and ultimately—if they are to reflect our humanity—must be well integrated into other prosocial systems to affect the best possible outcomes for all stakeholders. By engaging with a marketing system in a post-conflict, divided society, we are better able to understand the genesis and evolution of markets and marketing systems; the relationships among war economy, peace accords, and the ways that post-war marketing systems create community, provide for community needs, and create new vulnerabilities for some community members. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for sustainable peace and prosperity in Bosnia and in other post-conflict marketing systems, and suggestions for future research.


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brunstetter

Limited force—no-fly zones, limited strikes, Special Forces raids, and drones strikes outside “hot” battlefields—has been at the nexus of the moral and strategic debates about just war since the fall of the Berlin Wall but has remained largely under-theorized. The main premise of the book is that limited force is different than war in scope, strategic purpose, and ethical permissions and restraints. By revisiting the major wars animating contemporary just war scholarship (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, the drone “wars,” and Libya) and drawing insights from the just war tradition, this book teases out an ethical account of force-short-of-war. It covers the deliberation about whether to use limited force (jus ad vim), restraints that govern its use (jus in vi), when to stop (jus ex vi), and the after-use context (jus post vim). While these moral categories parallel to some extent their just war counterparts of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, jus post bellum, and jus ex bello, the book illustrates how they can be reimagined and recalibrated in a limited force context, while also introducing new specific to the dilemmas associated with escalation and risk. As the argument unfolds, the reader will be presented with a view of limited force as a moral alternative to war, exposed to a series of dilemmas that raise challenges regarding when and how limited force is used, and provided with a more precise and morally enriched vocabulary to talk about limited force and the responsibilities its use entails.


2021 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Emmanuel De Groof

This chapter discusses the deontology of peacemakers and mediators. It outlines the notion of epistemic communities and the reproduction of value systems, asking whether any form of emulation influences the evolution of international law in relation to transitional governance (‘TG’). The re-occurrence of TG can be attributed phenomena such as the ‘migration of constitutional ideas’, ‘constitutional borrowing’, ‘transnational information networks’, acculturation in contact groups, and the use of templates for peace building. The community of practitioners engaged in post-war countries and constitution building is relatively small. As a result, the epistemic community dealing with these issues creates a habitat favourable to the reproduction of professional practices by emulation. The question then becomes whether such reproduction is jurisgenerative, namely whether it expresses emerging law through custom creation or otherwise.


Author(s):  
Dimitar Tyulekov ◽  
Ilko Drenkov ◽  
Jani Nikolla

The League of Nations sets strict professional frameworks that are subordinate to scientific knowledge and international law and respect, without any differences between small and big powers. The first chairman, Eric Drummond, who headed up to 1934, established a huge international prestige of the organization and achieved a number of successes in peace building. The League’s policy in the Balkans is revealed mainly through its relations with Albania and Bulgaria, which both joined the League in December 1920. The two countries rely on the international organization for the peaceful resolution of their political, minority and social problems. Under the supervision of the League of Nations, a number of agreements for voluntary and mutual exchange of people between Greece and Bulgaria are being concluded, which aims to soothe the Macedonian problem in Aegean Macedonia. Under her patronage are the agreements between Greece and Albania regulating the protection of Greek minorities and schools, as well as settling the border dispute between the Serb-Croat-Slovene Kingdom and Albania in 1921. The rapid intervention of the United Nations suspended the Greek aggression on Bulgarian territory in the autumn of 1925 and prevented a possible new war. Dimitar Shalev's petitions from Skopje to the United Nations aim to achieve the Yugoslav state's humane treatment towards Bulgarian minorities within its borders, but political dependencies and overlapping contradictions are an obstacle to peaceful and sustainable political outcomes. In the second half of the 1930s, the League lost its initial prestige, and in the course of the emerging new global conflict it fell into political dependence, marking its collapse. Unresolved issues and contradictions, along with the harsh political post-war realities, quickly bury the League’s noble impetus.


Author(s):  
Ntina Tzouvala

Few legal developments have been so closely associated with the end of the Cold War and the perceived renewal of international law as the proliferation of schemes of international territorial administration (ITA) in the 1990s and early 2000s. Schemes of ITA were implemented in a diverse range of post-conflict settings, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor. Since then, ITA has been closely associated with the revival of the United Nations Security Council, its adoption of expansive interpretations of threats to “international peace and security” for the purposes for Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and the authorization of the use of force as well as of schemes of internationalized administration of varying degrees of comprehensiveness. Relatedly, the revival of interstate competition and the increasingly frequent usage of veto powers, coupled with growing unrest against the post-1990 global order, has raised doubts about the future of the practice. As both critics and supporters of ITA point out, modern ITA is not without precedent. Rather, notions of trusteeship, protectorate, mandated territories, and colonialism have been mobilized to situate the practice historically. Conceptually, international territorial administration is also associated with “robust peacekeeping,” which decisively moves away from ideas of minimal interference and neutrality, as well as with the concepts of “state-building,” “peace-building,” and “liberal peace-building.” Relatedly, the theory and practice of international territorial administration after the 1990s has been informed by ideas about “liberal peace,” the conviction that liberal democracies do not go to war with each other and, therefore, the spread of this particular form of government is a precondition for peace. Rising concerns about “weak” or “rogue” states as the breeding grounds for ethnic conflict, genocide, and terrorism also form the background of the practice. The ad hoc character of ITA has meant that the international organizations and states that are involved in each experiment vary greatly as does their mandate and lawful authority. As a result, multiple legal issues surrounding ITA remain contested and unresolved. For example, the applicability of the international law of occupation in the context of ITA is still fiercely debated, and so are issues about the human rights obligations owed by and the immunities enjoyed by international actors when they exercise de facto governmental functions.


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