Figuring Victims In International Criminal Justice

Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for granted, as an identity and category existing exogenously to the judicial process. This book takes a different approach. Through a close reading of the institutional practices of one particular court, it demonstrates how court practices produce the subjectivity of the victim, a subjectivity that is profoundly of law and endogenous to the enterprise of international criminal justice. Furthermore, by situating these figurations within the larger aspirations of the court, the book shows how victims have come to constitute and represent the link between international criminal law and the enterprise of transitional justice. The book takes as its primary example the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it is also called. Focusing on the representation of victims in crimes against humanity, victim participation and photographic images, the book engages with a range of debates and scholarship in law, feminist theory and cultural legal theory. Furthermore, by paying attention to a broader range of institutional practices, Figuring Victims makes an innovative scholarly contribution to the debates on the roles and purposes of international criminal justice.

In international law victims' issues have gained more and more attention over the last decades. In particular in transitional justice processes the victim is being given high priority. It is to be seen in this context that the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court foresees a rather excessive victim participation concept in criminal prosecution. In this volume issue is taken at first with the definition of victims, and secondly with the role of the victim as a witness and as a participant. Several chapters address this matter with a view to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Trial against Demjanjuk in Germany. In a third part the interests of the victims outside the criminal trial are being discussed. In the final part the role of civil society actors are being tackled. This volume thus gives an overview of the role of victims in transitional justice processes from an interdisciplinary angle, combining academic research and practical experience.

The United Nations has established a right to the truth to be enjoyed by victims of gross violations of human rights. The origins of the right stem from the need to provide victims and relatives of the missing with a right to know what happened. It encompasses the verification and full public disclosure of the facts associated with the crimes from which they or their relatives suffered. The importance of the right to the truth is based on the belief that, by disclosing the truth, the suffering of victims is alleviated. This book analyses the emergence of this right, as a response to an understanding of the needs of victims, through to its development and application in two particular legal contexts: international human rights law and international criminal justice. The book examines in detail the application of the right through the case law and jurisprudence of international tribunals in the human rights and also the criminal justice context, as well as looking at its place in transitional justice. The theoretical foundations of the right to the truth are considered as well as the various objectives appropriate for different truth-seeking mechanisms. The book then goes on to discuss to what extent it can be understood, constructed and applied as a hard, legally enforceable right with correlating duties on various people and institutions including state agencies, prosecutors and judges.

This book is a guide to the law and practice of victims’ roles before the International Criminal Court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The various chapters focus on the provisions relevant to victim participation at these courts and the case law interpreting and applying those provisions. The book thus informs the reader on the principal ways in which the relevant practice is developing, the distinct avenues taken in the application of similar provisions as well as the ensuing advantages and challenges. Unlike other volumes focusing on relevant academic literature, this volume is written mainly by practitioners and is addressed to those lawyers, legal advisers and victimologists who work or wish to work in the field of victim participation in international criminal justice. Kinga Tibori-Szabó is legal officer for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague and has previously worked for the Legal Representative of Victims at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Megan Hirst is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London and has worked on victims' participation issues in the Registries of the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, as well as in an LRV team in Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen.

This volume considers a variety of key issues pertaining to the rights of defendants and victims at International Criminal Courts (ICTs) and explores how best to balance and enhance the rights of both in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of international criminal proceedings. The rights of victims are becoming an increasingly important issue at ICTs. Yet, at the same time, this has to be achieved without having a detrimental impact upon on the rights of the defence and the efficiency of the courts. This book provides analyses of issues on the rights of both the accused and the victims. By discussing matters concerning these two pivotal actors in international criminal justice within the same volume, the work highlights that there are intrinsic and intense conflicting and converging relationships between victims and the accused, particularly in terms of their rights. While most of the chapters focus mainly on either the accused or the victims, others discuss both at the same time. The work strikes a fine balance between, on the one hand, classic topics on the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims and, on the other, topics which have been largely unexplored and/or which require new angles or perspectives. Additionally, there are some chapters which approach both the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims in new contexts and/or under novel perspectives. The book as a whole provides a discussion of the two sides of this important coin of international criminal justice. The work will be an essential resource for academics, practitioners and students with an interest in the field of international criminal law. It will also be of interest to human rights scholars who are working with the rights of victims and the accused.

The book analyses the difficulties the International Criminal Court faces with the definition of those persons who are eligible for participating in the proceedings. Establishing justice for victims is one of the most important aims of the court. It therefore created a unique system of victim participation. Since its first trial the court struggles to live up to the expectancies its statute has generated. The book offers a new approach of how to define victimhood by looking at the different international crimes. It seeks to offer guidance for the right to participate in the different stages of the proceedings by looking at the practice in national jurisdictions. Lastly the book offers insights into the functioning of the reparation regime at the ICC by virtue of the Trust Fund for Victim and its different mandates. The critical analysis of the ICC-practice with regard to definition, participation and reparation aims at promoting a realistic approach, which will avoid the disappointing of expectations and thus help to enhance the acceptance of the ICC.

This collection discusses appropriate methodologies for comparative research and applies this to the issue of trial transformation in the context of achieving justice in post-conflict societies. In developing arguments in relation to these problems, the authors use international sentencing and the question of victims' interests and expectations as a focus. The conclusions reached are wide-ranging and haighly significant in challenging existing conceptions for appreciating and giving effect to the justice demands of victims of war and social conflict. The themes developed demonstrate clearly how comparative contextual analysis facilitates our understanding of the legal and social contexts of international punishment and how this understanding can provide the basis for expanding the role of restorative international criminal justice within the context of international criminal trials.

While international criminal courts have often been declared as bringing ‘justice’ to victims, their procedures and outcomes historically showed little reflection of the needs and interests of victims themselves. This situation has changed significantly over the last sixty years; victims are increasingly acknowledged as having various ‘rights’, while their need for justice has been deployed as a means of justifying the establishment of international criminal courts. However, it is arguable that the goals of political and legal elites continue to be given precedence, and the ability of courts to deliver ‘justice to victims’ remains contested. This book contributes to this important debate through an examination of the role of victims as civil parties within the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Drawing on a series of interviews with civil parties, court practitioners and civil society actors, the book explores the way in which both the ECCC and the role of victims within it are shaped by specific political, economic and legal contexts; examining the ‘gap’ between the legitimising value of the ‘imagined victim’, and the extent to which victims are able to further their interests within the courtroom.