Recent Developments in International Criminal Law: Justice, Peace, and the Role of the International Criminal Court
I have not yet managed to fix the commenting problems on my blog. Currently, I am exploring working alternatives, but this whole process will take me some more time ... so please bear with me...
Today's post will, again, not cover the difficulties of the European Union, but this fact shall not discourage anyone interested in contributing to the ongoing debate on regrouping the European Union [link to post and debate].
Instead, I would like to dwell in this post on another area of law covered extensively on this blog: international criminal law [link to my prior blog posts]. Some recent events in international criminal law have sparked some media attention and I cannot help but add my twopenn'orth:
- a former military leader was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, torture and murder [AP article on Menendez trial];
- another former war time leader indicted for genocide was arrested [N.Y. times article on Karadzic arrest];
- and an arrest warrant has been requested for an incumbent head of state on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity [ICC press release on situation in Darfur, Sudan].
The Menendez trial involved acts committed roughly 30 years ago and the massacre of Srebrenica happened in 1995. Since then, domestic peace has been re-established both in Argentina and Former Yugoslavia, respectively. And with some delay to their internal peace processes, both countries have tackled the issue of bringing former perpetrators to justice: Argentina with substantial delay, but self-propelling; Serbia somewhat quicker, yet upon increasing international pressure.
The situation in Sudan, however, is different. The conflict involving Darfur is still on-going and the regime accused of committing human rights violations is still in power. International peace efforts have not yet been successful. Therefore, the recent actions of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) [website] against the incumbent Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir have stirred up a recurrent debate in international criminal law: i.e. the issue of the proper relationship between peace and justice.
Opponents of the recent request by the ICC prosecutor to issue an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President argue that the prospect of prosecution by the ICC might hamper current peace negotiations with the Sudanese government [see, e.g., N.Y. Times article on concerns brought by China and Russia in UN Security Council]. Proponents of an ICC arrest warrant generally put forward that an imminent ICC prosecution could allow UN representatives to press forward certain benchmarks in the current peace negotiations with Sudan [see today's International Crisis Group Weekly Update: Grono and Hara, Security Council Should Make President Meet Benchmarks]. Both arguments are, however, mainly focused on the peace negotiations and not on justice as an ultimate goal.
Therefore, I would be eager to learn your opinion on the relationship of peace and justice - in the case of Sudan, in particular, or from a more general, conceptional perspective.
Some further articles on this subject are listed below:
- Article by the Council of Foreign Relations [website] in today's Washington Post on Africa and the International Criminal Court [link to article].
- Article by Linda M. Keller, The False Dichotomy of Peace versus Justice and the International Criminal Court in the current issue of the Hague Justice Journal [link to journal website].
- My article Reconciling Peace with Justice: A Cooperative Division of Labor [link to abstract].
