War Crimes

The ICC Prosecutor’s Final Report on the Iraq/UK Investigation: Concerns Over Complementarity and the Court’s Future Legitimacy

/ Milena Sterio / Leave a comment

Earlier today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor released the Final Report regarding the status of the preliminary investigation into Iraq/United Kingdom (UK).  In this Report, the Prosecutor concluded that 

on the basis of the information available, there is a reasonable basis to believe that, at a minimum, the following war crimes have been committed by members of UK armed forces: wilful killing/murder under article 8(2)(a)(i)) or article 8(2)(c)(i)); torture and inhuman/cruel treatment under article 8(2)(a)(ii) or article 8(2)(c)(i)); outrages upon personal dignity under article 8(2)(b)(xxi) or article 8(2)(c)(ii)); rape and/or other forms of sexual violence under article 8(2)(b)(xxii) or article 8(2)(e)(vi)) (para. 69).  

Despite the above-mentioned finding, and despite the fact that over 3,000 cases of alleged abuse and atrocities by UK troops in Iraq had been referred to the UK national authorities, that many such cases had resulted in favorable settlements in UK civil courts, and that some such cases had been successfully litigated in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the ICC Prosecutor decided to close this investigation. In this post, I will discuss the procedural history of the Iraq investigation, as well as analyze the Prosecutor’s findings in this Report.  In addition, I will discuss the potential impact of this decision on the future of the ICC.  

Procedural History

The Prosecutor initially opened a brief preliminary investigation into Iraq/ UK, but this investigation was closed in 2006. In January 2014, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) together with Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) submitted an Article 15 communication to the Prosecutor, alleging the responsibility of UK armed forces and other UK officials for war crimes involving systematic detainee abuse in Iraq from 2003 until 2008. In light of this new information, the Prosecutor re-opened a preliminary investigation into this situation in May 2014.  In a 2017 Report, the Prosecutor announced that, following a thorough factual and legal assessment of the information available, it had reached the conclusion that there was a reasonable basis to believe that members of UK armed forces committed war crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC against persons in their custody. This second Iraq/UK investigation was just closed today; the Prosecutor’s rationale for reaching this decision was published in the Final Report.

Prosecutor’s 2020 Final Report

In today’s Final Report, the Prosecutor concluded “that the only appropriate decision is to close the preliminary examination without seeking authorisation to initiate an investigation” (para. 1). The Prosecutor reached this decision on admissibility grounds under Article 17 of the Rome Statute.  The Prosecutor focused both on gravity and complementarity under Article 17; this post will focus on the Prosecutor’s analysis of complementarity, which occupied most of the Report (I note that the Prosecutor determined to perform an admissibility analysis in this case, despite the fact that admissibility determinations do not normally form part of Article 15 Pre-Trial Chamber determinations; according to the Prosecutor, “[a]lthough the Appeals Chamber has recently held that admissibility does not form part of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s determination under article 15(4), it nonetheless stressed the persisting duty of the Prosecutor, under rule 48, to be satisfied that all of the factors relevant to the opening an investigation, including admissibility, are met before proceeding with an article 15 application” (para. 156)).

The Prosecutor explained in the Final Report that the complementarity test under article 17 involves a two-step inquiry, “involving a determination of whether the national authorities are active in relation to the same case (first step), and only if so, whether this activity is vitiated by unwillingness or inability of the authorities concerned to carry out the proceeding genuinely (second step)” (para. 154). According to the Prosecutor, the UK authorities had both acted to investigate these alleged abuses and had shown a genuine willingness to investigate.  

First, the Prosecutor detailed in this Report how the UK authorities had shown action regarding the investigation of their troops’ alleged abuses in Iraq.  The Report explained that the UK authorities established the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), whose original mandate was to investigate cases of alleged death or ill-treatment of Iraqis in British custody.  IHAT had an initial caseload of 165 cases, and it was supposed to conclude its work by November 2012. Over time, IHAT’s caseload expanded dramatically,  as new allegations of death or ill-treatment were received and its mandate was extended first to December 2016 and then to December 2019 (as the Report explained, IHAT was deemed necessary both to discharge the UK’s duty to investigate under British law, as well as under the European Convention on Human Rights; in addition, subsequent proceedings before the ECHR in Al Skeini and others v United Kingdom confirmed that the UK Government had a duty under the European Convention to carry out an adequate and effective investigation into allegations involving British service personnel in Iraq ).  The UK considered the IHAT investigations, and potential prosecutions, as necessary to satisfy the admissibility requirements of the Rome Statute.  In early 2017, following complaints over IHAT’s duration and expense, the UK Secretary of State for Defence announced that IHAT would be closed.  Remaining investigations were taken over by a new investigative unit, known as Service Police Legacy Investigations (SPLI).  IHAT and the SPLI referred a total of nine cases to the so-called Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA), the body which had become charged with determining whether a prosecution will take place.  In all nine cases, the SPA recommended that no charges be brought against the accused individuals.  In February 2020, UK authorities explained to the ICC Prosecutor that the SPA had most likely determined not to proceed with these prosecutions because the SPA applies a higher evidentiary threshold than IHAT/SPLI, and that it was likely that lawyers at the latter “might have considered cases were ready to proceed, whereas the SPA found they were not” (para. 200). In light of all of the steps taken by the UK authorities, and despite the fact that no cases resulted in actual prosecutions, the Prosecutor concluded in this Final Report that the UK authorities had acted for the purposes of the Article 17 complementarity analysis. 

Although the initial assessment of a claim might not lead to a fully-fledged investigation being undertaken (based on the screening criteria), or an investigation or prosecution might be abandoned after a subsequent assessment, the Office considers that it is difficult to argue that the State had remained inactive in relation to such a claim, since such assessments form part of the investigative and prosecutorial process (para. 276)

Second, the Prosecutor determined in the Final Report that the UK authorities had shown a genuine willingness to investigate alleged crimes committed by their forces in Iraq. As the Prosecutor explained, the determination of unwillingness requires, “having regard to the principles of due process recognized by international law”, that “[t]he proceedings were or are being undertaken or the national decision was made for the purpose of shielding the person concerned from criminal responsibility for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court referred to in article 5” (para. 294). The Prosecutor further emphasized that the concept of being “unwilling” genuinely to investigate is “concerned with a situation in which proceedings are conducted in a manner which would lead to a suspect evading justice as a result of a State not being willing genuinely to investigate or prosecute” (para. 284). The Prosecutor thus reviewed various UK authorities’ actions in this case through the lens of willingness. Serious concerns had been raised against UK authorities, alleging that they did not genuinely intend to pursue prosecutions against their own service members and higher-level officials.  As the Final Report described, despite the fact that over 3,000 potential cases had been referred to UK authorities, the latter failed to initiate a single prosecution.  In addition, former IHAT staff members had raised concerns that this mechanism lacked proper access to evidence and to witnesses, due to UK government interference.  Finally, concerns over undue delays in the proceedings had been flagged as a potential violation of the victims’ rights; such delays, according to some allegations, were the result of the UK authorities’ purposeful policy not to seriously investigate and/or prosecute cases.  Despite such serious concerns regarding the UK government’s “willingness” to genuinely prosecute, the Prosecutor concluded that “the information available does not demonstrate a lack of willingness to genuinely carry out the proceedings, pursuant to article 17(2)(b)” (para. 433).  In fact, the Final Report emphasized that it was not sufficient for the Prosecutor to have concerns over the genuineness of a national authority’s willingness to investigate and prosecute, but that instead it must be demonstrated that such authorities acted in bad faith. According to the Prosecutor,

The primary task of the Office is not to express its view on how it might have proceeded differently in the circumstances, nor to identify areas of disagreement with IHAT/SPLI and SPA’s decision-making and operational assessments of whether cases presented a realistic prospect of obtaining sufficient evidence at the investigative stage or a realistic prospect of conviction to support a prosecution. Nor is it the Office or the Court’s mandate to pronounce on whether a State complied with its duties to provide an effective remedy and fulfilled its procedural obligation to give effect to fundamental human rights enshrined in instruments such as the ECHR. The question is whether there is evidence to establish that the State concerned was unwilling to investigate or prosecute (para. 458).  

In sum, the Prosecutor concluded that the case of Iraq/UK was inadmissible under Article 17’s complementarity requirement, because the UK authorities had sufficiently demonstrated that they had acted to investigate and that they were genuinely willing to investigate.

Potential Impact of the Final Report on the ICC’s Legitimacy

It is possible, and relatively easy, to criticize some of the Prosecutor’s findings, particularly on “willingness” grounds.  It could be argued that the record established sufficient evidence that the UK authorities had reluctantly established IHAT and subsequent mechanisms; that they interfered with the mechanisms’ access to evidence; that they caused undue delays and demonstrated a significant bias against initiating any prosecutions – in sum, that they acted purposefully to shield their own service members and officials from any possibility of prosecution.   Yet, while such concerns are serious, the more fundamental issues raised by this decision to close the Iraq/UK investigation involve future cases and the ICC’s legitimacy.

In light of this decision, it may become relatively easy for other powerful states to evade the ICC’s reach by launching their own “genuine” investigations which result in zero prosecutions.  States such as the United States and Israel may welcome the court’s analysis of complementarity in this Final Report and its conclusion that the UK has been “willing” to prosecute its own soldiers and officials, despite a decade-long investigation which has yielded no cases. Complementarity may become a shield in and of itself, despite the fact that complementarity is actually supposed to ensure that perpetrators aren’t shielded from ICC’s prosecutorial reach. If states are able to avoid the ICC on complementarity grounds in the future, this could seriously undermine the court’s legitimacy. The ICC was established in order to ensure that accountability is imposed on perpetrators of atrocities; despite its relatively weak prosecutorial record, judicial squabbles on its bench, several state withdrawals from its jurisdiction, and some powerful states’ open hostility, the Court could be objectively defended in light of the importance of its fundamental mission.  The imposition of accountability on those who commit genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes is objectively one of the most important goals of international criminal justice; an imperfect institution which nonetheless contributes to this goal remains important and legitimate.  If the ICC were to become an easily-avoided forum, which states can bypass by launching sham but “genuinely willing” investigations, then the Court’s fundamental purpose comes into question.  In such circumstances, it becomes difficult to continue to defend the ICC.  For those of us who believe in the pursuit of international justice and in its institutions, including the ICC, the possibility of this type of a complementarity-based challenge to the court’s legitimacy is troubling.

Call for abstracts

/ Anette Bringedal Houge / Leave a comment

STUDYING WAR CRIMES:

The ethics of re-presenting mass violence in research

When do descriptions of harm become academic sensationalism rather than re-presentations of violent materialities? Can academic interest and engagement in mass harm ever avoid voyeurism? How can sensational violence be ethically re-presented in research? Across disciplines theorizing mass harm, a consensus is emerging cautioning against sensationalism in re-presentations of perpetrators, victims, crimes, and sufferings, seeing detailed descriptions of violence as academic voyeurism. Yet, how comfortable a read can research that has violent profusion at its core become, before the distance created by language becomes an ethical – and analytical – challenge in its own right?

This edited volume invites experienced scholars to address thoroughly the ethics of doing research on mass harm in general, and of re-presenting and describing mass violence, harmdoing, trauma, and suffering in their own research in particular. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches and empirical cases, the book will address how mass violence and war crimes are brought into research – both as an ethical, a sensational, and an analytical matter.

We ask contributors to reflect on their re-presentations of mass crimes, violence and justice, seeing re-presentations both as an issue to do with individual and disciplinary research ethics but also as a matter to do with power and material structures of academic knowledge production. The purpose is to encourage active engagement with a research ethics that goes beyond ‘procedural ethic;’ to expand the discussion on responsibility for the stories we hear, read, analyze, and re-tell; and to address in-depth the ethics of listening, seeing, and telling in research on mass violence and war crimes.

The book will be relevant for all researchers who wish to engage ethically with the study of mass violence and war crimes.

We invite abstracts that explore the ethics of re-presenting mass violence in research.

Abstracts may also cater specifically to:

  • The ethics of caring, seeing, listening and re-presenting
  • Selection and exclusion: whose stories are told?
  • Understanding harm/understanding as harm
  • “Thick descriptions” and sensationalism
  • Breaking the silence vs silence as choice
  • Emotions, positionality, and reflexivity

Submission guidelines:

Abstract of no more than 500 words to be submitted by November 30th, 2018 to editors at studyingwarcrimes@gmail.com. We only accept original contributions and the abstract needs to clearly demonstrate the chapter’s contribution to the volume.

Please include a 150-200 word bio highlighting your affiliation, work experience and credentials in the field of war and mass violence research.

Further process:

After an initial screening and by December 15th, 2018, editors will invite 8 contributors to develop their abstract into a full chapter (5-7000 words) to be submitted by April 15th 2019. We will apply for funding for a lunch-to-lunch workshop for contributors in May 2019. The final submission date for full chapters will be in August, 2019.

Routledge (Taylor&Francis Group) initiated our work with this collection, and has expressed a strong interest in publishing the book.

About the editors:

Sladjana Lazic is a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Peace Studies (CPS) at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Norwegian University for Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, on victims’ perspectives on transitional justice and legitimacy.

Anette Bringedal Houge holds a PhD in Criminology and Sociology of Law from the University of Oslo on conflict-related sexual violence, perpetrator re-presentations, and international criminal justice. She has published her research in e.g., Aggression and Violent Behavior, British Journal of Criminology and Criminology and Criminal Justice. Anette is the Head of Humanitarian Needs and Analysis at the Norwegian Red Cross.

John Bolton is right (sort of)—the ICC should not be able to prosecute Americans. How US law has major gaps in domestic accountability for war crimes.

/ Alina Utrata / 3 Comments

John_Bolton_(33024357411)

US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Photo Credit Gage Skidmore.

It has long been known that US National Security Advisor John Bolton is no fan of the International Criminal Court (ICC). But today marked a dramatic step up in his rhetoric, ahead of the ICC’s decision about an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Despite the fact than any ICC investigation will probably focus on the Taliban, the US is worried that American troops stationed in the country may be vulnerable to prosecution.

Ahead of the ICC’s announcement, Bolton claimed that the US will “ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.” (However, it seems unclear if the President actually has the legal authority to do this.)

John Bolton is right about one thing: the ICC should not be able to prosecute Americans for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The fact that the ICC can reveals huge gaps in the American domestic legal system’s ability to hold citizens and foreign nations residing in the US accountable for mass atrocities.

Bolton’s pronouncements to the contrary, the ICC only has jurisdiction over crimes included in its statute committed by citizens or in the territory of states party to the Rome Statute. That is why the ICC only theoretically has jurisdiction over Americans for crimes committed in Afghanistan (and not, for instance, Yemen). Furthermore, the ICC is a court of last resort. The principle of complementarity means that the ICC can only prosecute individuals if other states are unwilling or unable to prosecute them first.

Despite Bolton’s claim that his opposition to the ICC is to protect American service members, US military personnel are arguably more protected from ICC prosecution by the principle of complementarity than other American civilians. The US military’s court martial system is generally ‘willing and able’ to hold service members accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, there is a huge gap in the American legal systems’ ability to hold American civilians and foreign nationals residing in the United States accountable for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed abroad.

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Corporate accountability: Dutch court convicts former “Timber baron” of war crimes in Liberia

/ Dieneke de Vos / Leave a comment

On 21 April 2017, the Dutch Court of Appeal in ‘s-Hertogenbosch issued a decision holding Mr Guus Kouwenhoven, a Dutch national, responsible as an accessory to war crimes committed in Liberia and parts of Guinea between August 2000 and December 2002. The decision is one of few to address corporate accountability for war crimes. As the president of the Oriental Timber Company (OTC) and director of the Royal Timber Company (RTC), Mr Kouwenhoven supplied weapons, and material, personnel and other resources to former Liberian President Charles Taylor and his armed forces, which were used to fuel their fight against a rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). The court held Mr Kouwenhoven liable not only for directly violating a UN arms embargo in place at the time, but equally as an aider and abettor to war crimes that were committed using the resources he provided, including rape, pillage, murder, and inhumane treatment. Here are a few highlights.

The case against Guus Kouwenhoven

The crimes for which Mr Kouwenhoven stood trial were alleged to have been committed during the second Liberian Civil War between 2000 and 2002, when Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was fighting a brutal war against LURD. The specific charges related to crimes committed in Voinjama and Kolahun in Lofa County in Liberia, as well as in Guéckédou, across the border in Guinea. Although the charges against Mr Kouwenhoven related to his having been “complicit in repeated violations of the laws and customs of war, to wit murder or rape”, the allegations covered a range of different crimes. The court noted that unnamed (co-)perpetrators, members of Charles Taylor’s armed forces, indiscriminately fired at civilians and military targets, burned houses with civilians trapped inside, cut off people’s heads, smashed babies against walls to kill them, forced civilians to undress before shooting them, and raped women and children.

As director and president of two of the largest timber companies in Liberia, Mr Kouwenhoven’s business interests were closely tied to former President Charles Taylor’s political, financial, and personal interests. Mr Kouwenhoven maintained frequent contact with Charles Taylor, who had financial interests in his two companies and frequently received payments and other resources. In exchange, Mr Kouwenhoven gained access to large swathes of territory for the exploitation of timber and was given de facto control over the Buchanan port.

The court noted that Mr Kouwenhoven used his companies to import, store, and distribute weapons in Liberia, in clear violation of the UN arms embargo. He provided trucks for the transportation of armed forces, weapons and ammunition, and facilitated the import of weapons and ammunition. He also actively encouraged his employees to support Charles Taylor, such as by unloading weapons from his ships in Buchanan and transporting them to various places in Liberia or participating actively in the fighting, and threatened those who refused with dismissal. He also allowed the armed forces access to an RTC camp, effectively used as a meeting place and a mechanism for storage and resupply of weapons to the frontline.

Corporate accountability for international crimes

Importantly, Mr Kouwenhoven is not convicted of directly perpetrating international crimes himself. Rather, the court held that he made an “active and conscious” contribution to the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law, by the provision of material, personnel, and other resources through his businesses in Liberia. Although he had been charged in the alternative as (co-)perpetrator and as an accessory to the crime, he was ultimately convicted as an aider or abettor.

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Yazidi Women and Girls’ Resistance Against Genocide, Enslavement and Sexual Violence: Report from the First International Yazidi Women’s Conference

/ Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum / Leave a comment

“Those awaiting help from others are condemned to disappear.” – International Yazidi Women’s Conference participant, quoting a proverb.

Last weekend, on March 11 & 12, 2017, I led a researcher and two students from the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic to accompany Patricia Viseur Sellers, Special Adviser to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC to the first International Yazidi Women’s Conference in Bielefeld, Germany. Our Clinic has been working with Ms. Sellers for the past two years on criminal accountability for the gender dimension of atrocity crimes, especially as these crimes affect children, in several national and regional cases. Our collaboration currently is focused on the sexual enslavement and other gender-based crimes against the Yazidis.

image1

From left: Kerrijane John, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Leyla Boran, Patricia Viseur Sellers, Alexandra Insinga and Samantha Hechler.

Days after International Women’s Day, the Yazidi Women’s Council, the Kurdish Women’s Peace Office (Cenî), and the Platform for Struggle for Women Held in Captivity gathered over 200 participants and prominent Yazidi organizations to denounce the atrocities—including, among others, the crimes of genocide, enslavement, rape, and torture—that have been and continue to be perpetrated against Yazidi women and girls. The attendees—all women—predominantly hailed from the Yazidi and Kurdish refugee and diaspora communities. After the German government did not grant several speakers visas to attend, they participated via Skype from Shengal (Sinjar) in Northern Iraq.

Experts from the legal, political, historical, medical and psychosocial fields contributed to the panel presentations, which centered on the concepts of genocide and femicide, enslavement, sexual violence, trauma, and resistance. Prominent Yazidi and Kurdish women’s human rights lawyers, including Leyla Boran and Faika Deniz Pasha, the first Turkish Kurdish woman parliamentarian, Feleknas Uca, and allies among women’s rights activists in Germany led the discussions, which included arguments supporting the link between genocide and femicide and the legal requirements of intent under international law. In addition, historians contextualized the current genocide against the Yazidis with previous genocides that have occurred against the group and in the region. Importantly, first-hand survivor accounts of genocide, sexual violence and enslavement bore witness to the crimes as well as to this community’s experience when ISIS invaded their homeland. The voices of the powerful speakers from Shengal also stressed the multiplicity of ways in which Yazidi women are organizing and resisting ongoing attacks on their people and homeland in northern Iraq. All the speakers stressed that they will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent the continued kidnapping, enslavement and sale of Yazidi girls and women.

Ms. Viseur Sellers keynoted the conference and provided the international human rights and criminal law frameworks to name the atrocities being committed against Yazidi women and girls by ISIS. Sellers explained the value in protecting group identities as well as preserving racial, religious, national, and ethnic differences. The international community’s prohibition against the intentional destruction of such groups under the Genocide Convention, she stated, was evidence of such values of diversity. In addition, Ms. Sellers detailed what the crimes of enslavement and slave trading are; she emphasized that these international crimes, along with genocide, are regarded the most heinous crimes under international law. She asserted that, undeniably, ISIS has and continues to perpetrate acts of genocide, enslavement and slave trading against Yazidi women and girls in violation of treaties and jus cogens norms. Sellers concluded by recognizing the intergenerational harms of genocide and enslavement while giving language, voice and operational tools to assist the Yazidi women and girls’ continuing struggle and resistance.

According to the Yazidi community, the August 2014 massacre in Shengal was the 74th recorded genocide against the religious minority group. The United Nations International Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, among others, has provided evidence and analysis of the crimes here. As the struggle for group survival continues, Yazidi women have organized themselves to resist multiple threats, including ISIS. Accountability for past, present and future crimes is recognized as a necessary component of justice for the Yazidis. The group’s concerns for survival, safety and return of thousands of their women and children held in captivity or forced to join ISIS forces, however, necessarily overshadowed these discussions.

What the future holds is unclear, especially given the military actions against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and the implications of the military solution for the remaining estimated 3000 Yazidi women and girls in captivity—some already sold by ISIS to slave-holders outside the contested areas. What our team did find is the need for dialogue between international lawyers familiar with the issues and representatives of these communities to develop and refine creative, pragmatic and comprehensive legal strategies to open avenues of accountability and justice for the atrocity crimes committed in the past and still being perpetrated against Yazidi women and girls. The time to act is now. Our Clinic, in concert with Patti Sellers, will continue our work on these issues and would welcome the opportunity to coordinate with others in the IntLawGrrls network who are working on the Yazidi genocide or on the gender dimensions of these atrocity crimes.

 

The Bystander Dilemma

/ Laurie Blank / Leave a comment

Debates about conflict, crime and accountability often center on the victims and the perpetrators — protection of victims; search for, prosecution and punishment of perpetrators; compensation, restitution and acknowledgement for victims. These are, of course, essential questions and issues. But any situation of violence, from random street crime to the largest atrocities, involves a more complex cast of characters than the two main protagonists. Examining the roles, potential and obligations of that vast space between victim and perpetrator offers an opportunity to explore challenging questions about human security, responsibility, and the intersection between law, morality and the social contract.

I had the great privilege of participating in just such a conversation last Friday at the University of Utah Law Review symposium on The Bystander Dilemma: The Holocaust, War Crimes, and Sexual Assaults. The symposium was inspired by Utah Law Professor Amos Guiora’s remarkable new book, The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust.  Professor Guiora’s book is an intellectually challenging and deeply personal exploration of the legal and moral obligations of bystanders, based on the experiences of his parents, Holocaust survivors from Hungary.

Over the course of three panels — on the Holocaust, situations of conflict and mass atrocities, and sexual assault — and a keynote, the symposium wove together old and new conversations about several critical thematic questions. Who is a bystander? Where is the line between bystander and perpetrator or between bystander and potential victim? How do these lines affect how we view a bystander’s obligations — or perhaps how the bystander him- or herself views any such obligations? Why does the bystander matter and, most directly linked to Professor Guiora’s book, why is there a disconnect between the bystander’s moral and legal obligations?

Particularly interesting was the breadth of ways in which one might consider the bystander and for what reasons, all of which matter to any consideration of moral or legal obligations and consequences. First, and perhaps most instinctive, we think of the bystander in the context of protecting the victim of a crime — someone who can alert the authorities or even stop the violence in some way.  This links directly to the second — preventing violence and crimes. If a bystander speaks up in some way, the attack or crime is less likely to happen.

But the discussions and exploration of the bystander dilemma ranged far beyond this direct relationship. A third component focuses on assigning responsibility to act, whether moral or legal responsibility. The central call of Professor Guiora’s new book is for a legal obligation for bystanders to alert authorities or otherwise intervene to protect the victim of a crime. Fourth, the bystander conversation is also about identifying capability — who has the capability to act to help a victim, to stop a crime, to prevent violence, and how does the nature of that capability affect the content of any such obligation?

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Go On! KPBS Dead Reckoning: War, Crime & Justice From WWII to the War on Terror

/ IntLawGrrls / Leave a comment

Go On! makes note of interesting conferences, lectures, and similar events.

logo.png► KPBS and ILG’s own Prof. Naomi Roht-Arriaza present “Dead Reckoning”. A three-hour documentary series on PBS which follows war crimes investigators and prosecutors as they pursue some of the world’s most notorious criminals— notably Adolf Eichmann, Saddam Hussein, Radovan Karadzic, Charles Taylor, and Efraín Ríos Montt. The first episode “The General’s Ghost” airs Tuesday, March 28, 2017, at 8 PM on KPBS TV. Click here for details.

El Salvador’s Constitutional Court Invalidates Amnesty Law; Will Prosecutions Follow?

/ Naomi Roht-Arriaza / 1 Comment

After years of deliberations, the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled on July 13 that the country’s 1993 amnesty law is unconstitutional and must be stricken. The 4-1 decision, although long expected, has caused uproar in El Salvador, where neither side in the civil war has been supportive of prosecutions for past crimes and where rampant criminality and insecurity are present-day scourges. The four-person majority of judges Sidney Blanco, Florentín Meléndez, Rodolfo González and Eliseo Ortiz, grounded the decision in the rights of the victims to access to justice, to judicial protection of fundamental rights, and to full reparations. It makes extensive use of international law, especially the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It will provide new hope for the long-suffering victims of the country’s twelve-year civil war, but will also complicate the country’s politics and challenge a weak and compromised prosecutors’ office.

The complaint was brought by a number of NGO representatives and victims of rights violations, alleging that the amnesty law was illegally passed and violated El Salvador’s international commitments and constitution. The 1993 amnesty was passed to deal with the crimes of both sides in a civil war that cost some 75,000 lives. The amnesty was passed just three days after a U.N. sponsored Truth Commission issued its report. The Commission found that most of the massacres, assassinations, forced disappearances and torture committed had been carried out by the armed forces or by death squads connected to them.

The text of the decision

The Court first dismissed the procedural illegality argument, but used the occasion to note that the amnesty was not, as the Prosecutors’ office argued, a part of the peace accords that ended the civil war. On the contrary, those accords had stressed the need to end impunity for human rights violations. The Court thus confronted head-on one of the central myths of the country’s political classes, that amnesty was required by the peace accords. Rather, the Court held that the legislature had to balance the need for reconciliation with the need for justice for the victims. It cited with approval in this regard the 1992 Law of National Reconciliation, which provided amnesty for political crimes, but expressly excluded “grave violent events from January 1, 1980 on, which have left their mark on society, and demand the most urgent public knowledge of the truth” that were mentioned by the U.N.-backed Truth Commission.

In its July 13 judgment, the Court held that the amnesty is unconstitutional as applied to all crimes against humanity and those war crimes that violate the fundamental guarantees of Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions, committed by either side in the conflict. The amnesty violates the country’s international obligations to investigate and prosecute under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, Protocol II, and the constitutional right of the victim of a crime to civil damages and to judicial protection of fundamental rights. Regarding war crimes, although Protocol II calls for the “widest possible amnesty,” that provision must be read in light of all the country’s international obligations, and the amnesty cannot be absolute. With respect to crimes against humanity, those crimes are by definition not subject to amnesty or statutes of limitations and are subject to universal jurisdiction.

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Defendant perpetrators and conflict-related sexual violence

/ Anette Bringedal Houge / 1 Comment

As the International criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR, respectively) are concluding their mandates, the archives they leave behind comprise an unprecedented historical record about the war years, about the collective and individual harms suffered, and about the development of international criminal law. The tribunals’ legacies will be interpreted, negotiated, and renegotiated as more researchers dive into these materials. Undoubtedly, the archives will keep scholars from a wide array of disciplines busy for years and decades to come.

So what are we to make of these archives? What are they documenting? What are they leaving aside? What kind of historical record do they produce, and what is it that they establish? For whom? On what premises? What are the values of trial truths and the legal narratives they story?

In a recent article in the British Journal of Criminology I engage with these questions by focusing on a specific subset of cases at the trial end of these archives: cases brought to trial and ending in convictions of defendants for their direct participation in sexual violence.

Rather than analysing the production of jurisprudence before these courts, or the treatment of victims and victim witnesses, I ask how these direct perpetrators and the causes of their offenses are constructed within and by these institutions and its primary actors.

Emphasizing arguments that are interpretive or explanatory in terms of the defendants and their participation in sexual violence over those that are descriptive in terms of the offenses, there are two primary narratives in the court actors’ arguments. These explain the defendant either as someone whose personal characteristics and personality deviate from the norm, or they re-present the defendant as an ordinary man/woman, pointing to factors beyond the control of the defendant as explanations for his or her crimes.

Deviant defenders

So-called deviance narratives are either formulated by the prosecution, for which they constitute aggravating arguments. Here, the defendants are portrayed as sadistic opportunists who thrived on the opportunity to rape or sexually torture their victims. These narratives are often repeated in judgments, as in the case against Delić at the ICTY:

The manner in which these crimes were committed are indicative of a sadistic individual who, at times, displayed a total disregard for the sanctity of human life and dignity.

When defense counsels invoke deviance narratives, they do so for mitigating purposes. Thee narratives often involve partial acknowledgement of the crime, while also full or partial denials of responsibility. Typically they are based on the statements of psychiatric experts who account for the defendants’ dependent personalities and their extreme conformity, which in turn inevitably lead to criminal behavior if authority figures ask for it.

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Transitional Justice and State Responsibility

/ Laurel E. Fletcher / 7 Comments

If international atrocity crimes are acts so egregious that their impunity cannot be legally tolerated, why don’t we punish States that commit them? I explore this question in my recent article A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? Transitional Justice and the Effacement of State Accountability for International Crimes, published in the Fordham International Law Journal. States and individuals each may be responsible under international law for the same incidents of mass atrocities: individuals under international criminal law and States under the law of state responsibility. Yet when the international community mobilizes to sanction State-perpetrated atrocities, it moves to punish individual perpetrators and side steps States. For example, a 2014 proposal before the Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the ICC made no mention of legal responsibility of the Syrian State for violation of obligations erga omnes. I argue that part of the reason the international community prefers enforcing international criminal responsibility over holding states accountable is transitional justice.

Transitional justice has emerged as the dominant normative framework for how the international community responds to mass violence. Within transitional justice, the legacy of the Nuremberg trials has produced individual criminal accountability as the highest form of legal accountability for atrocities. Transitional justice rejects punishing States for atrocities as illiberal (collective punishment) and illegitimate (lack of positive law). Advocates justified the ad hoc criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda by arguing that punishing individual war criminals was necessary to avoid collective guilt and would promote reconciliation. Transitional justice has focused on legal accountability for individuals and needs to consider what State responsibility offers as a normative and practical matter. Without legal accountability, States enjoy moral and legal impunity for their crimes. States escape their legal obligations to repair the injury they cause and to institute reforms that secure a fuller measure of justice and peace.

The pursuit of State responsibility for atrocity crimes furthers the aims of transitional justice in important conceptual and practical ways. Accountability for international crimes is a bedrock international principle around which the United Nations has organized international transitional justice policy. Rule of law ideals have thoroughly infused the international justice discourse. Yet international rule of law principles apply equally to States. So when, in the name of accountability for international crimes, transitional justice effectively ignores State legal responsibility, transitional justice undermines the international commitment to rule of law.

In the case of mass atrocities, States violate norms of the highest order—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes—and obligations owed to the international community as a whole. Such transgressions deserve to be acknowledged as such. State-perpetrated mass slaughter of civilians is conducted in furtherance of a State policy, and relies on multiple collective dimensions of the State to advance this criminal pursuit. To the extent that transitional justice pursues international criminal sanctions, these acts when carried out by States also should be identified as wrongs, and offending States should be held accountable.

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