International Crimes And Other Gross Human Rights Violations

An interdisciplinary approach to international crimes as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other gross human rights violations for students, scholars, professionals and practitioners to get an insight in the roles of perpetrators and bystanders.

Promoting Accountability under International Law for Gross Human Rights Violations in Africa reflects primarily upon the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in challenging impunity for serious crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994. The authors, among whom are leading scholars and practitioners of international law, draw lessons for future tribunals such as the permanent International Criminal Court.

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 contains a systematic assessment of the content and scope of obligations to prevent gross human rights violations. There has been a great deal of attention for concepts aiming to prevent gross human rights violations, such as conflict prevention and the responsibility to protect. Yet despite this shift in attention towards prevention, it has remained unclear what legal obligations states have to prevent gross human rights violations under international human rights law. The focus in this book is on three specific types of injury prohibited under international human rights law: torture, arbitrary death and genocide. Further distinctions are made between four temporal phases (long-term prevention, short-term prevention, preventing continuation, preventing recurrence) and territorial and extraterritorial obligations. The structure of the book allows academics and practitioners to learn about obligations to prevent gross human rights violations in a general sense, as well as find targeted information on the content and scope of obligations in specific settings. Nienke van der Have recently completed her Ph.D. at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, which forms part of the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Law, and currently works as Senior legal specialist at the department of Constitutional Affairs and Legislation of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of The Netherlands.

This volume elucidates and explores the interrelationships and direct causal connection between serious international crimes, serious breaches to fundamental human rights, and gross affronts to human dignity that lead to mass forced migration. Forced migration most often occurs in the context of protracted armed conflict of a noninternational nature where terrorism, fierce fighting, deep animosity, tit-for-tat retaliation, and “rapid dominance” doctrine all lead to the commission of atrocity crimes. Accordingly, this volume makes a valuable contribution to the literature and to the cause of trying to resolve mass forced displacement at its root cause, to explore the course that it takes, and how it might be prevented. The collection comprises original research by leading legal scholars and jurists focusing on the three central themes of serious international crimes, human rights, and forced migration. The work also includes a Foreword from Sir Howard Morrison, QC, former President of the Appeals Division of the International Criminal Court. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of international law, migration, human rights, and international criminal law.

After having ignored victims, only recently both domestic and international law have begun to pay attention to them. As a consequence, different international norms related to victims have progressively been introduced. These are norms generally characterized by a certain concept from the perspective of victims, as well as by the enumeration of a list of rights to which they are entitle to; rights upon which the international statute of victims is built. In reverse, these catalogues of rights are the states’ obligations. Most of these rights are already existent in the international law of human rights. Consequently, they are not new but consolidated rights. Others are strictly linked to victims, concerning the following categories: victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law, victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of violations of international criminal law and victims of terrorism.

The study of international crimes - such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide - deserves to grow into a separate and fully fledged specialization within criminology, called supranational criminology. Supranational criminology entails the study of international crimes, behavior that shows affinity with these crimes, the causes and the situations in which they are committed, as well as interventions and their effectiveness. What exactly entails supranational criminology? What are international crimes? Should other forms of behavior also be qualified as international crimes? What are the specific characteristics of international crimes as forms of state sponsored or state facilitated crimes? Explanatory theories have to be developed which can be translated into testable hypotheses. Which theories from mainstream criminology can provide answers for the prevalence or causes of international crimes? Have the international courts and tribunals succeeded in their aim? This book repairs the fundamental and historical neglect of criminology and breaks out of a state of denial by putting international crimes on the criminological agenda.