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This book argues that accountability for extraordinary atrocity crimes should not uncritically adopt the methods and assumptions of ordinary liberal criminal law. Criminal punishment designed for common criminals is a response to mass atrocity and a device to promote justice in its aftermath. This book comes to this conclusion after reviewing the sentencing practices of international, national, and local courts and tribunals that punish atrocity perpetrators. Sentencing practices of these institutions fail to attain the goals that international criminal law ascribes to punishment, in particular retribution and deterrence. Fresh thinking is necessary to confront the collective nature of mass atrocity and the disturbing reality that individual membership in group-based killings is often not maladaptive or deviant behavior but, rather, adaptive or conformist behavior. This book turns to a modern, and adventurously pluralist, application of classical notions of cosmopolitanism to advance the frame of international criminal law to a broader construction of atrocity law and towards an interdisciplinary, contextual, and multicultural conception of justice.
Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.
Child soldiers remain poorly understood and inadequately protected, despite significant media attention and many policy initiatives. This Research Handbook aims to redress this troubling gap. It offers a reflective, fresh and nuanced review of the complex issue of child soldiering. The Handbook brings together scholars from six continents, diverse experiences, and a broad range of disciplines. Along the way, it unpacks the life-cycle of youth and militarization: from recruitment to demobilization to return to civilian life. The overarching aim of the Handbook is to render the invisible visible – the contributions map the unmapped and chart new directions. Challenging prevailing assumptions and conceptions, the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers focuses on adversity but also capacity: emphasising the resilience, humanity, and potentiality of children affected (rather than ‘afflicted’) by armed conflict.
This book re-imagines transitional justice as a movement, and explains why truth commissions are promoted and created. By exploring how the movement developed, as well as efforts to create truth commissions in the Balkans, Colombia, and the US, it examines the processes through which political actors translate transitional justice into political action.
This book deals with child soldiers’ involvement in crimes under international law. Child soldiers are often victims of grave human rights abuses, and yet, in some cases, they also participate actively in inflicting violence upon others. Nonetheless, the international discourse on child soldiers often tends to ignore the latter dimension of children’s involvement in armed conflict and instead focuses exclusively on their role as victims. While it might seem as though the discourse is therefore beneficial for child soldiers as it protects them from blame and responsibility, it is important to realize that the so-called passive victim narrative entails various adverse consequences, which c...
What happens when the international community simultaneously pursues peace and justice in response to ongoing conflicts? What are the effects of interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the wars in which the institution intervenes? Is holding perpetrators of mass atrocitiesaccountable a help or hindrance to conflict resolution? This book offers an in-depth examination of the effects of interventions by the ICC on peace, justice and conflict processes. The "peace versus justice" debate, wherein it is argued that the ICC has either positive or negative effects on'peace', has spawned in response to the Court's propensity to intervene in conflicts as they still rage. This book ...
This work is the first to examine the expressive and communicative functions of law in a comprehensive way in the field of atrocity crime. It shows that expression and communication are not only inherent parts of the punitive functions of international criminal justice, but are represented in a whole spectrum of practices.
Over the last quarter of a century a new system of global criminal justice has emerged. But how successful has it been? Are we witnessing a new era of cosmopolitan justice or are the old principles of victors’ justice still in play? In this book, Daniele Archibugi and Alice Pease offer a vibrant and thoughtful analysis of the successes and shortcomings of the global justice system from 1945 to the present day. Part I traces the evolution of this system and the cosmopolitan vision enshrined within it. Part II looks at how it has worked in practice, focusing on the trials of some of the world’s most notorious war criminals, including Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karad ić, Saddam Hussein and Omar al-Bashir, to assess the efficacy of the new dynamics of international punishment and the extent to which they can operate independently, without the interference of powerful governments and their representatives. Looking to the future, Part III asks how the system’s failings can be addressed. What actions are required for cosmopolitan values to become increasingly embedded in the global justice system in years to come?
This book reveals the many harms which flow across the ever-more porous sovereign borders of a globalising world. These harms expose weaknesses in the international legal regime built on sovereignty of nation states. Using the Trail Smelter Arbitration, one of the most cited cases in international environmental law, this book explores the changing nature of state responses to transboundary harm. Taking a critical approach, the book examines the arbitration's influence on international law generally, and international environmental law specifically. In particular, the book explores whether there are lessons from Trail Smelter that are useful for resolving transboundary challenges confronting the international community. The book collects the commentary of a distinguished set of international law scholars who consider the history of the Trail Smelter arbitration, its significance for international environmental law, its broader relationship to international law, and its resonance in fields beyond the environment.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most extensive and widely ratified international human rights treaty. This Commentary offers a comprehensive analysis of each of the substantive provisions in the Convention and its Optional Protocols on Children and Armed Conflict, and the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Pornography. It provides a detailed insight into the drafting history of these instruments, the scope and nature of the rights accorded to children, and the obligations imposed on states to secure the implementation of these rights. In doing so, it draws on the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, international, regional, and domestic courts, academic and interdisciplinary scholarly analyses. It is of relevance to anyone working on matters affecting children including government officials, policy makers, judicial officers, lawyers, educators, social workers, health professionals, academics, aid and humanitarian workers, and members of civil society.