The Tension between Criminal Proceedings for International Crimes and Truth Commissions as Central Elements of a Liberal Approach to Transitional Justice

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-126
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Liberal Approach

Transitional Justice

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Michel ◽  
Katherine Del Mar
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Commissions Of Inquiry ◽  
Fact Finding

This chapter examines the different transitional justice mechanisms established to respond to serious international crimes that have occurred in the context of armed conflict. These transitional mechanisms include truth-seeking mechanisms such as truth commissions, commissions of inquiry, and judicial fact-finding. This chapter considers the problems that may arise in the interaction among different transitional justice mechanisms such as protection of the rights of the accused. It also argues that transitional justice requires a coordinated approach among a plurality of mechanisms to assist a society in transitioning from a state of armed conflict in which serious international crimes were committed, to a peaceful and reconciled future.

The Prosecution of International Crimes in Uruguay

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Galain Palermo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
International Crimes

AbstractThis article discusses the criminal trials carried out in Uruguay against civilian, military, and political functionaries who committed crimes, including crimes against humanity, during the period of civilian-military dictatorship lasting from 1973 to 1985. These criminal proceedings are analyzed in the contexts of transitional justice and international criminal law. Therefore, the first part of this article addresses the diverse phases of transitional justice in Uruguay while the second part analyzes fundamental aspects of criminal trials against 'state terrorists'.

Classifying Countries within the Transitional Justice Typology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia M. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Employment Change ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
File Access ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Public Disclosures

Chapter 2 explores each of the country cases in this project, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and Albania. The chapter provides historical details of the transitional justice reforms in all twelve countries from 1989–2013, covering lustration, file access, public disclosures, and truth commissions. This material is then used to place each country case within the typology developed in Chapter 1, according to whether the measures were expansive and included compulsory employment change, limited and included largely voluntary employment change, informal and largely symbolic, or actively rejected. The chapter provides variable conceptualization and operationalization specifics to be used in the subsequent statistical analyses, including three different lustration variables, a truth commission variable, and timing of reform variables. It provides qualitative, comparative historical details to justify the classification of countries according to the primary independent variable, namely lustration and public disclosure programs.

scholarly journals Tilting at windmills: Reparations and the International Criminal Court

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Luke Moffett ◽  
Clara Sandoval
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Crimes

Abstract More than 20 years on from the signing of the Rome Statute, delivering victim-centred justice through reparations has been fraught with legal and practical challenges. The Court’s jurisprudence on reparations only began to emerge from 2012 and struggles to find purchase on implementation on the ground. In its first few cases of Lubanga, Katanga, and Al Mahdi the eligibility and forms of reparations have been limited to certain victims, subject to years of litigation, and faced difficulties in delivery due to ongoing insecurity. This is perhaps felt most acutely in the Bemba case, where more than 5,000 victims of murder, rape and pillage were waiting for redress, and the defendant was not indigent, but where he was later acquitted on appeal, thereby extinguishing reparation proceedings. This article critically appraises the jurisprudence and practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on reparations. It looks at competing principles and rationales for reparations at the Court in light of comparative practice in international human rights law and transitional justice processes to consider what is needed to ensure that the ICC is able to deliver on its reparations mandate. An underpinning argument is that reparations at the ICC cannot be seen in isolation from other reparation practices in the states where the Court operates. Reparative complementarity for victims of international crimes is essential to maximize the positive impact that the fulfilment of this right can have on victims and not to sacrifice the legitimacy of the Court, nor quixotically strive for the impossible.

Many Doors to International Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
John Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Survivor Guilt ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Complex Sequences

Responsibilities to protect and prevent elite crimes are best energized by enforcement that walks through many doors. Effective deterrence is rarely delivered by the International Criminal Court. Yet deterrence is possible when it patiently cumulates through many doors. Likewise truth, justice, and reconciliation can achieve little through one door and much through many. Opening more doors to the complexly cross-cutting character of survivor guilt with mass atrocities can better open possibilities for future prevention and reconciliation than simply doors to courtrooms that find a criminal on one side of complex sequences of atrocity. The Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened quickly after World War II. They did not prove to hold keys to truth and reconciliation for Germany until the Eichmann trial finished in Jerusalem in 1962. Why? Still today, non-confession by the U.S. to Hiroshima/Nagasaki as war crimes has meant truncated Japanese reconciliation. Different kinds of doors are needed with crimes like the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombing, the rape of Nanjing and the “comfort women” issue. These have included citizens tribunals, truth commissions, and indigenous justice in cases like Bougainville that rejected the truth commission model. When we reflect upon door diversity, transitional justice turns out not to be very focused on justice or international criminal law, and not to be at all transitional, but rather a maze of doors to justice of diverse kinds that open or close across the longue durée (as developed in the work of Susanne Karstedt).1

Commissioning Truth and Reconciliation

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Claire Whitlinger
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Project Planning ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Scientific

This chapter explores the relationship between the 2004 commemoration in Philadelphia, Mississippi and the Mississippi Truth Project, a state-wide project initially modelled after South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After reviewing the history of transitional justice efforts in the United States and the social scientific literature on how civil society-based truth commissions emerge, the chapter demonstrates how the 2004 commemoration and subsequent trial of Edgar Ray Killen precipitated the formation of a state-wide truth commission when previous efforts had failed. In short, this research finds that the commemoration mobilized mnemonic activists; concentrated local, state, and global resources; broadened political opportunity; and shifted the political culture of the state. Despite these developments—and years of project planning—the Mississippi Truth Project changed course in 2009, abandoning a South African-style truth commission in favour of grassroots memory projects and oral history collection. The chapter thus sheds lights on the possibilities and perils of pursuing non-state truth commissions.

Transitional Justice without Transition

2020 ◽  
pp. 397-446
Author(s):  
Beth Van Schaack
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
International Community ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Justice Process

The penultimate chapter offers a discussion of the prospects for a genuine transitional justice process in Syria. Chapter 10 begins with a short history of the development of the archetypal tools within the transitional justice toolkit—criminal accountability, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, lustration, institutional reform, and guarantees of nonrecurrence—and the way in which transitional justice efforts have become increasingly internationalized. This enhanced involvement of the international community in promoting transitional justice reflects the belief—premised on historical case studies and emerging empirical research—that societies in transition must address the crimes of the past in some capacity or risk their repetition. The chapter surveys the most recent research testing these claims, which has benefited from the creation of a number of new databases gleaned from states in transition. The chapter then describes ways in which the international community has tried to prepare for a future transitional justice process in Syria even in the absence of a political transition, including by training Syrian advocates, surveying Syrian communities to understand their knowledge of transitional justice and preferences for Syria, promoting psychosocial rehabilitation and solidarity among victims, and preparing for truth-telling exercises and institutional reform measures. The conclusion suggests ways in which the international community could still promote some form of transitional justice as part of the reconstruction process, even if Assad remains in power, which seems increasingly likely.

Imagining Justice for Syria

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Van Schaack
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Face ◽  
Justice Program ◽  
State Of Affairs

This book situates the war in Syria within the actual and imagined system of international criminal justice. It explores the legal impediments and diplomatic challenges that have led to the fatal trinity that is Syria: the massive commission of international crimes that are subject to detailed investigations and documentation but whose perpetrators have enjoyed virtually complete impunity. The book tracks a number of accountability solutions to this tragic state of affairs that are being explored within multilateral gatherings, by states, and by civil society actors, including innovations of institutional design; the reactivation of a range of domestic jurisdictional principles (including universal jurisdiction in Europe); the emergence of creative investigative and documentation techniques, technologies, and organizations; and the rejection of state consent as a precondition for the exercise of jurisdiction. Engaging both law and policy around international justice, the text offers a set of justice blueprints, within and without the International Criminal Court. It also considers the utility, propriety, and practicality of establishing an ad hoc tribunal and pursuing a transitional justice program without a genuine political transition. All told, the book attempts to capture the creative energy radiating from members of the international community intent on advancing the accountability norm in Syria even in the face of geopolitical blockages within the U.N. Security Council. In so doing, it presents the range of juridical measures—both criminal and civil—that are available to the international community to respond to the crisis, if only the political will existed.

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