Do War Crime Tribunals Deliver Justice?

The evolution of international criminal justice is important to consider. Two ad-hoc tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR), have facilitated the adoption of the ICC. The ICC came into existence on July 1, 2002. The court operates on the principle of complementarity which means that the court does not function unless a state in question is unable or unwilling to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute for one of the covered crimes. Whereas the ICTY and the ICTR had primary jurisdiction and could supersede state action, the ICC only has the aforementioned

Crimes against the international community are a collection of offences that are recognised by the international community as being of universal concern. However the prosecution of crimes against the international community can be controversial. Such crimes may be committed in the context of military conflict. They may be highly politically motivated, or they may have been ordered or committed by the state itself. The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was a significant development in the law of crimes against the international community. The independent international court established by the Rome Statute, acts as a last resort for crimes fitting into the three categories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Due to Australia’s Dualistic system, both the War crimes Act

The Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against its minority Armenian population from 1915-1917 left an estimated 1.5 million dead and to date, not one individual has been tried for these egregious crimes. The mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in World War I and Jews by the Nazis in World War II shocked the conscience of the international community and led to the creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), in order to hold the perpetrators of crimes of this magnitude accountable. In its preamble, the UN charter sets the objective to "establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". The genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire and Nazis made it clear that an international standard must be set in order to protect the rights of individuals. The UN has attempted to establish international law with the creation of the CPPCG and other resolutions, however, these resolutions are simply words on paper unless they are properly enforced. In this essay I will be examining whether the United Nations have been successful in its enforcement international law, specifically the CPPCG.

Brett Schaefer and Steven Groves believes the United States decision was justifiable. They argue that the International Criminal Court has a worthy purpose, but still has issues that need to be addressed before the United States would join the court. Schaefer and Groves explain the Article 98 Agreement and the American Service Member Protection Act. Also their argument contains the five concerns the Bush Administration had about joining the ICC, but the two major concerns regard the fear of political abuse of power and also the threat to national sovereignty.

After Josip Broz Tito, the communist president of Yugoslavia, died in 1980, citizens of Yugoslavia took advantage of attempting to declare their independence (History of Bosnian Genocide). A man by the name of Slobodan Milosevic soon came into power and further fueled the tension within Yugoslavia. In 1992, Bosnia, following the footsteps of Croatia and Slovenia for independence, was home for different ethnic Muslim groups; with in the same year, Serbia declared war on Bosnia in hopes to claim the land as their own (History of Bosnian Genocide). By using military force and concentration camps, Serbia was attempting to eradicate this ethnic group using genocide. Just like the Holocausts, individual rights were being violated and they were being dehumanized. As a result and stated in our class text, the International Criminal Court (1998) was formed to holding state leaders accountable for human rights violations. Humanitarian intervention would have been permissible in this instance because, again, it would save people’s lives. “The violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia has added the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to the global vocabulary (Denich).‘” Serbia was trying to completely erase the Bosnian ethnic

The United States’ decision to not join the ICC is largely contested today; however, many may be unaware that though its role is currently vehemently debated, the United States was once instrumental in the creation of the Court. Even prior to World War I, the United States was a proponent of international courts, as well as was the creator of many standards of global law now incorporated into the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. Among these contributions are, “Inclusion in the jurisdiction of the Court of crimes committed during internal armed conflicts, and the drafting of a supplemental code explaining the precise actions and intent that must be proved for each of the crimes in the Statute…” (AMICC

In 1997, the world witnessed the second most horrific crime in eastern Europe since the Holocaust: The Srebrenica massacre. Throughout the course of 11 days, over 8,000 Bosniak –Bosnian Muslim- males, specifically those who were of age to join the military, were rounded up, and killed by the Bosnian Serb army. The army’s defense for their actions was that they were trying to reunite Serb territory after the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became its own state. Despite this claim, the ICTY still charged Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, two of the men who spearheaded the ethnic-cleansing campaign in Bosnia, with war crimes including genocide. However, scholars debate whether Srebrenica, albeit horrible, and other instances like itself, being labeled a genocide is a misapplication of the term. Due to the technical legal definition of what constitutes as a genocide, many crimes like Srebrenica that would morally be viewed as one, may not be in the

On October 10, 2014, the special advisors published a statement concerning the genocidal violence and acts of terrorism in Kobane, Syria. “mission and work of the UN system as a whole. UN agencies, departments and programmes contribute to the prevention of genocide by, inter alia, supporting equitable economic development and the fair distribution of political power; promoting tolerance and respect for ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, and the protection of human rights; providing humanitarian assistance; and interceding to ensure peace, security and stability.” (the UN website). When a genocide, war crimes, acts of terrorism, and crimes against humanity have taken, the UN lets the International Criminal Court (separate from UN) to investigate and press charges. The UN uses many different committees and groups to prevent the terror of genocide in all countries, around the

The UN played a vital role in the Bosnian genocide. In eastern Bosnia, the UN had declared three towns as ‘’safe havens’’. These towns were controlled by the Bosnian government and protected by international peace keeping forces. On July 11 1993 Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica they over whelmed ditched peace keeping forces.

How did the use of combined strategies of the ICTR and the Gacaca work in the Rwandan case, could it be seen as modern day model for transitional justice?

In the pursuit of positive peace for the global community, certain mechanisms are necessary in order to better protect human rights and resolve interstate conflicts. Prior to the events of World War II, a cogent set of laws defining those human rights, much less violations therein were never heard at an international scale. The International Criminal Court has the role as both appellate for justice and voice for peace in the international community but has not yet resolve the contradictory ends of both roles. That contradictory end is that many countries proclaim the necessity of the International Criminal Court as an advocate for conflict resolution and peace advocacy while being resist or outright antagonistic towards the court when their own state has committed those same crimes. To the ends of defending basic universal rights, the International Criminal Court (hereafter ICC) serves that capacity when state level systems cannot or will not act accordingly.

Impunity is defined as an exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action. More specific, it refers to the failure to bring perpetrators of human rights violations to justice, thus denying victims the right to justice and restoration. These violators may be government officials or private individuals and they are often protected by special jurisdictions, sanctions, immunities, or amnesties. In 1945, at the Nuremberg Trials, which judged the accused war criminals of Nazi Germany, the international community pledged that "never again" would it allow monstrous crimes against humanity or genocide to take place. The United Nations recognized the need for an international criminal court to prosecute and punish persons responsible and to help end impunity for these perpetrators of the most serious crimes against humanity. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. By 1951, international treaties against genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity had entered into force, establishing a body of law known as International Humanitarian Law. On July 17, 1998, the international community reached a historic milestone through the adoption of the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of crimes

     Over the past few years, the International Criminal Court (ICC or “the Court”) has been igniting controversy the world over. As more countries rallied behind it, more objections have been made, particularly from Americans, regarding what many view as fundamental flaws. I have chosen two papers to compare and contrast the different viewpoints taken by the authors when reflecting upon America’s involvement with the ICC. One calls for total rejection of the ICC, the other weighs the risks and benefits and calls for revision but acceptance.

Nowadays, the number of violations of international humanitarian law 's norms had become an increasing phenomena. The situation requires urgent and effective international control and prosecution in international tribunals for grave crimes recognised under international humanitarian law as crimes presenting real threat for humanity and peace. In order to control such crimes, the relevant legal mechanisms for international prosecution were established by creation of ad-hoc tribunals: International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) . In 1993, UN Security Council established ICTY as result of grave violations of international humanitarian law in the territory of former Yugoslavia. This tribunal was created on ad hoc basis as a subsidiary organ of UN. The ICTY determines the individual criminal responsibility, according to its Statute. The former was allowed to operate jurisdiction over grave abuses of Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws and customs of war, genocide, crimes against humanity, which were allegedly committed in the territory of former Yugoslavia since 1991 in time of armed conflict. As it was noticed by UN Security Council, the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia was created in the belief that it would ‘contribute to ensuring that such violations are halted and effectively repressed’.

The traditional establishment of the ad hoc tribunals formed as a permanent “Court of Arbitration”, this organ so formed was under the League of Nations which was later replaced by The International Court of Justice after the World War II [1].