Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T02:30:17.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Building Victim-Led Coalitions to Press for Justice Following Mass Atrocity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2019

Diane Orentlicher*
Affiliation:
Washington College of Law, American University.

Extract

Assurances of victim participation in proceedings before the International Criminal Court and Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have been seen as a welcome corrective to the flawed model of earlier tribunals. The first such tribunal created since the postwar period, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was established by the UN Security Council in May 1993 without even consulting those who survived the atrocities that gave rise to its creation, the majority of which took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nor were victims formally incorporated into the ICTY's work except for those who provided testimony and other evidence. (The same holds true for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN Security Council in 1994; in the interests of brevity, my remarks will focus on the ICTY.)

Type
Building Victim-Led Coalitions in the Pursuit of Accountability
Copyright
Copyright © by The American Society of International Law 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This panel was convened at 9:00 a.m., Thursday, April 5, 2018, by its moderator Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch, who introduced the panelists: Marino Cordoba, Victim Advocate; Souleymane Guengueng, a victim and activist; Diane Orentlicher of American University Washington College of Law; and Kathy Roberts of the Transitional Justice Clinic.

References

1 See, e.g., Impunity Watch, Victim Participation in Transitional Justice Mechanisms: Real Power or Empty Ritual? 6 (2014)Google Scholar; SáCouto, Susana, Victim Participation at the International Criminal Court and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: A Feminist Project?, 18 Mich. J. Gender & L. 297, 299–301 (2012)Google Scholar.

2 SC Res. 827 (May 25, 1993).

3 See Ivković, Sanja Kutnjak, Justice by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 37 Stan. J. Int'l L. 255, 291 (2001)Google Scholar.

4 SC Res. 955 (Nov. 8, 1994).

5 See A Milestone for Justice in Africa (editorial), N.Y. Times (July 22, 2015).

6 Ríos Montt was the first former leader to face trial in a national court on genocide charges. After a five-month trial, he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity based on atrocities committed in 1982–1983 and sentenced to serve eighty years in prison. Although that conviction was later overturned, Ríos Montt faced new charges at the time of his death in 2018. See Stephen Kinzer, Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91, N.Y. Times (Apr. 2, 2018).

7 See, e.g., Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals 207–15 (2000); O'Brien, James C., The International Tribunal for Violations of International Humanitarian Law in the Former Yugoslavia, 87 AJIL 639, 639–43 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 I develop these points in Diane Orentlicher, Some Kind of Justice: The ICTY's Impact in Bosnia and Serbia (2018).

9 See, e.g., Tolbert, David & Kontić, Aleksandar, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Transitional Justice, the Transfer of Cases to National Courts, and Lessons for the ICC, in The Emerging Practice of the International Criminal Court 135, 145–47 (Stahn, Carsten & Sluiter, Göran eds., 2009)Google Scholar; Donlon, Fidelma, Rule of Law: From the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to the War Crimes Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Deconstructing the Reconstruction: Human Rights and Rule of Law in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina 257, 269–80 (Haynes, Dina Francesca ed., 2008)Google Scholar; Lauth, Mechtild, Ten Years After Dayton: War Crimes Prosecutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 Helsinki Monitor 253, 257–58 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This focus is understandable in part because the ICTY's development of a completion strategy provided crucial impetus for creating Bosnia's war crimes institutions, and, as noted in the text, the ICTY and OHR played central roles in developing those institutions.

10 See Orentlicher, supra note 8, at 341. The ICTY did not play a similar role in launching Serbia's war crimes institutions, which have operated since 2003, but nonetheless played a crucial part in catalyzing their development. See id. at 388–93.

11 Id. at 352 (quoting Judge Whalen).

12 Id. at 352–53.

13 See, for example, initiatives described in id. at 311–14.

14 See Vinjamuri, Leslie, Deterrence, Democracy, and the Pursuit of International Justice, 24 Ethics & Int'l Aff. 191, 197 (2010)Google Scholar.

15 Sikkink, Kathryn & Kim, Hun Joon, The Justice Cascade: The Origins and Effectiveness of Prosecutions of Human Rights Violations, 9 Ann. Rev. L. Soc. Sci. 269, 280 (2013)Google Scholar.

16 Orentlicher, supra note 8, at 158. It is possible, of course, that Bosnian victims would have felt much the same way as Chadian survivors if the ICTY, like the Extraordinary African Chambers, had been created closer in time to the trials of senior suspects, even if those trials occurred long after their crimes. Notably, as well, the trials of Habré and Ríos Montt did not last as long as major leadership trials in the ICTY. This, too, may go some way toward accounting for survivors’ apparently high levels of satisfaction with the outcome of these trials.

17 Prosecutor v. Mladić, Case No. IT-09-92-T, Trial Judgment (Int'l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia Nov. 22, 2017).

18 See Orentlicher, supra note 8, at 159.