scholarly journals The Main Characteristics of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia During its Mandate from 1993 to 2017

SEEU Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Viona Rashica
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals

Abstract The tradition of international criminal tribunals which started with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals was returned with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As a result of the bloody wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Security Council of the United Nations decided to establish the ICTY as an ad hoc tribunal, that was approved by the resolutions 808 and 827. The main purpose of the paper is to highlight the features of the ICTY during its mandate from 1993 to 2017. For the realization of this research are used qualitative methods, based on the bibliography that is related with international criminal law, with special emphasis with the activities of international criminal tribunals. Furthermore, some data are also collected from the credible internet sources, which have valuable information about the procedures of the ICTY and for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The results of the study demonstrate that during its mandate, the ICTY was accompanied with a lot of successes which distinguish it from the other international criminal tribunals. At the same time, the ICTY has also a lot of failures, which have come as a result of various political influences within it. The conclusions of this paper aim to increase knowledge about the activity of the ICTY, by offering important information for its establishment and organs, and for its main successes and failures.

The Good Deeds of International Criminal Defendants

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 799-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN GALBRAITH
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Good Deeds

AbstractInternational criminal tribunals try defendants for horrific acts: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. At sentencing, however, evidence often arises of what I will call defendants’ ‘good deeds’ – humanitarian behaviour by the defendants towards those on the other side of the conflict that is conscientious relative to the culture in which the defendants are operating. This article examines the treatment of good deeds in the sentencing practices of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I show that the tribunals’ approaches are both undertheorized and internally inconsistent. I argue that the tribunals should draw upon the goals that underlie international criminal law in developing a coherent approach to considering good deeds for sentencing purposes.

scholarly journals The International Criminal Court: Promise and Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 269-272
Author(s):  
Makau Mutua
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals

The International Criminal Court (ICC or Court) is an institution born of necessity after a long and arduous process of many false starts. The struggle to establish a permanent international criminal tribunal stretches back to Nuremberg. The dream, which was especially poignant for the international criminal law community, for a permanent international criminal tribunal was realized with the adoption in 1998 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The treaty entered into force in 2002. Those were heady days for advocates and scholars concerned with curtailing impunity. No one was more ecstatic about the realization of the ICC than civil society actors across the globe, and particularly in Africa, where impunity has been an endemic problem. Victims who had never received justice at home saw an opportunity for vindication abroad. This optimism in the ICC was partially driven by the successes, however mixed, of two prior ad hoc international criminal tribunals—the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

scholarly journals Joint criminal enterprise in the practice of international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Crimen ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Irena Čučilović
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Criminal Enterprise ◽  
Extended Form ◽  
Joint Criminal Enterprise

Joint criminal enterprise (JCE) is the institute first applied by the International criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Tadić case, and thereafter further shaped through the practice of the ICTY despite the fact that JCE as a form of individual responsibility is not mentioned anywhere in the Statute of ICTY, neither implicitly nor explicitly. Although today there is no doubt that the Joint criminal enterprise is an institute of international criminal law, which was very often applied in the practice by both ICTY and other international ad hoc tribunals, the serious remarks to this institute do not abate. It's pointed out that this is an institute that "was created" to ensure the conviction of the defendants, which procedurally affects the prosecution, which is relieved of the burden of proving criminal responsibilities and the specific roles of each of the participants in the JCE. Besides that, at the time when this doctrine was formulated, it was not entirely clear whether it was a form of commission or a form of complicity. Only a couple of years later, in the Milutinović et al. case, the ICTY stands out that the liability based on the JCE doctrine, in fact, is a responsibility for the commission, which further compromised this doctrine. Questionless, the application of the Joint criminal enterprise doctrine in practice leads to serious violation of the fundamental principles of contemporary criminal law. With general review of the Joint criminal enterprise doctrine, in this piece of work, the author considers one case of conviction under the third (often referred to as "extended") form of JCE, in order to point out the key problems which this doctrine produces in practice.

Murder as a Crime against Humanity at the Ad Hoc Tribunals: Reconciling Differing Languages

2006 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 145-195
Author(s):  
Chile Eboe-Osuji
Keyword(s):  
French Text ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
English Text ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Wide Range

SummaryThe statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the Former Yugoslavia give these tribunals jurisdiction over murder as a crime against humanity. Yet the judges of these tribunals have often found themselves disagreeing as to the level means rea required for conviction. The controversy results from the French text that employs the term “assassinat” in the place where the English text speaks of “murder.” Assassinat is equivalent only to the premeditated kind of murder. This has led some of the judges to insist that no mens rea lower than premeditation is sufficient for conviction for murder as a crime against humanity under the statutes of the ICTR and the ICTY. It is suggested in this article that neither the requirements of international criminal law nor a contextual reading of the statutes truly favours such a strict view of murder as a crime against humanity, which effectively excludes a wide range means rea, which will, but for the use of the term “assassinat” in the French text, properly anchor a conviction for murder.

Swaying the Hand of Justice: The Internal and External Dynamics of Regime Change at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (03) ◽  
pp. 585-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hagan ◽  
Ron Levi ◽  
Gabrielle Ferrales
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Political Forces

This article develops a conflict approach for studying the field of international criminal law. Focusing on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, we draw on Burawoy's (2003 ) elaboration of reflexive ethnography to determine how external political changes affect the work of an international legal institution. We explore how political frameworks of legal liberalism, ad hoc legalism, and legal exceptionalism result in internal office, organizational, and normative changes within this Tribunal, thereby linking national political transformations with the construction of the global. Drawing on rolling field interviews and a two-wave panel survey, we conclude that the claims to universals that underwrite transnational legal fields cannot be understood solely through an analysis of external political forces, but must be combined with attention to how these are refracted through internal organizational change within international institutions.

The International Criminal Court's Provisional Authority to Coerce

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Franceschet
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
World Order ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Right

The United Nations ad hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda had primacy over national judicial agents for crimes committed in these countries during the most notorious civil wars and genocide of the 1990s. The UN Charter granted the Security Council the right to establish a tribunal for Yugoslavia in the context of ongoing civil war and against the will of recalcitrant national agents. The Council used that same right to punish individuals responsible for a genocide that it failed earlier to prevent in Rwanda. In both cases the Council delegated a portion of its coercive title to independent tribunal agents, thereby overriding the default locus of punishment in the world order: sovereign states.

scholarly journals International Criminal Law as a Spotlight and Black Holes as Constituents of Legacy

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 209-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa van den Herik
Keyword(s):  
Black Holes ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
One Step ◽  
Overall Performance ◽  
Fair Balance

This contribution engages with Sara Kendall’s and Sarah Nouwen’s article on the legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and their call for an ethos of institutional modesty. I much support the nuanced approach that underlies their call and I see it as a prerequisite to properly and adequately appreciate the ICTR’s past existence and operation. I would even be open to moving one step further in the direction of an ethos of sobriety. Rather than seizing the momentum to celebrate accomplishments and highlight milestones, legacy-talk and legacy-construction of international criminal tribunals should entail a form of reckoning. Indeed, as suggested by Kendall and Nouwen, the “justices not done” and the “justices pending” must be part and parcel of the ICTR’s legacy-constructions so as to offer a fair balance and to capture the ICTR’s overall performance, explicitly accounting for results as well as omissions.

scholarly journals The Legacy of the ICTY and ICTR in China

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
Bing Bing Jia
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Court ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Tribunal

Legacy is a matter that may become topical when its creator finally stops producing. Normally, the silent years would be many before the thought of legacy enters into open, formal discourse among lawyers and decision-makers. This comment treats the meaning of the word as relative to the circumstances in which it is invoked. The more closely it is used in relation to the present, the more distant it drifts from its literal meaning, to the extent that it denotes what the word “impact” signifies. This essay questions whether the word “legacy” is apt in describing the footprint of the work of the two ad hoctribunals in China, where its influence has, as a matter of fact, been waning ever since the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998 (“Rome Statute” ). The Chinese example suggests that the work of the tribunals is (at least so far) no more significant to international criminal law than the illustrious Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials of the 1940s. The most major impact (a more apposite term than legacy) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for China may be that China’s policy with regard to the tribunals, manifested mostly in the United Nations, has determined its approach to the International Criminal Court (“ICC” ). For that, the work of the tribunals could be considered as having left China something in the nature of an indirect legacy.

New Mechanisms for the Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 934-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryl A. Mundis
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
International Community ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
Domestic Courts

The international criminal court (ICC) will serve as a permanent institution dedicated to the enforcement of international humanitarian law sixty days after the sixtieth state has deposited its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval, or accession to the Treaty of Rome with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.1 Pursuant to Article 11 of the ICC Statute, however, the ICC will have jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the treaty comes into force.2 Consequently, when faced with allegations of violations of international humanitarian law in the period prior to the establishment of the ICC, the international community has five options if criminal prosecutions are desired.3 First, additional ad hoc international tribunals, similar to those established for the former Yugoslavia (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY) and Rwanda (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTR) could be established.4 Second, "mixed" international criminal tribunals, which would share certain attributes with the ad hoc Tribunals, could be created.5 Third, the international community could leave the prosecution of alleged offenders to national authorities, provided that the domestic courts are functioning and able to conduct such trials. Fourth, in those instances where the national infrastructure has collapsed, international resources could be made available to assist with the prosecution of the alleged offenders in domestic courts. Finally, the international community could simply do nothing in the face of alleged violations of international humanitarian law.

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