While statelessness remains a global phenomenon, it is a global issue with an Asian epicentre. This chapter situates the book within the context and multi-disciplinary scholarship on statelessness in Asia by reviewing the causes, conditions and/or challenges of statelessness. It recognizes statelessness in this region as a phenomenon beyond forced migration and highlights the arbitrary and discriminatory use of state power in producing and sustaining statelessness. The chapter reviews the ‘state of statelessness’ in Asia, including applicable international, regional and national legal frameworks. It also maps some of the core themes that emerge from the contributors’ examination of the causes and conditions of statelessness in Asia. These include: the relationship between ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity and statelessness; the legacies of colonialism; contemporary politics surrounding nation-building, border regimes and mobilities; as well as intersecting vulnerabilities. The chapter concludes with some preliminary thoughts on frameworks of analysis and future research agendas, including challenges and prospects for reform.

When after lengthy adjudication reparations eventually materialise in the locations where the atrocities occurred, survivors’ responses to such reparations vary greatly. Such responses may include relief and celebration, but reparations are just as likely to be met with confusion, contestation and/or rejection. The practices that determine how reparations are conceived significantly influence the responses that victims and others in society develop regarding such reparations. Behind these questions is the dynamic interrelationship between what courts have to offer and what victims accept as reparations. This chapter explores this conundrum by way of three concrete reparative measures considered or implemented in the context of the ECCC’s reparations mandate. In juxtaposing measures that were granted by ECCC judges as reparations and those that were rejected, the chapter shows some of the effects of courts’ practices on the meaning of reparations.

This chapter turns to a critical juncture where the details of the convergence of the underlying normative responses were debated and shaped, namely the negotiations of the first reparations mandates in international criminal justice. The chapter delves into the arenas where these norms were negotiated: the ICC Rome Statute negotiations, and the ECCC’s Internal Rules-making. By examining the main debates during the negotiations of these foundational laws, the chapter identifies the negotiation practices that were chosen to mediate between competing objectives and visions of international justice. Inquiring into the compromises that emerged from these negotiations sheds light on the long-lasting effects of these compromises on the subsequent operation of the reparations regimes at both courts.

This introduction lays out the book’s aims and its approach to studying reparations. The book uses the notion of ‘practices’ as an analytical lens to make visible forms of social actions that together and simultaneously enable and constrain reparations. The book examines these practices through four phases of the ‘social life’ of reparations: norm-making, engagement with conflict-affected populations, as well as adjudication and implementation of reparations. Accompanying the introduction is a brief background to the case studies that are at the core of this book, namely the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The book focuses on the first two cases at each court that have reached the reparations stage: at the ICC, the cases against Thomas Lubanga and Germain Katanga relating to the situation in Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo; and at the ECCC, Cases 001 and 002 involving senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge and those most responsible for crimes committed in Cambodia during the 1970s.

Reparations have forced international(-ised) criminal courts to move beyond their comfort zones and engage with the diverse socio-political and cultural contexts before them. At the core of this process is the courts’ engagement with survivors of mass atrocities, who were largely absent during the negotiations. The first cases before both the ICC and the ECCC were the testing ground for their novel victim participation schemes. This chapter shows that targeting and representational practices have shaped participation, influencing who receives reparations and how these reparations are conceived. The contours of the groups of victims who receive reparations are constructed and continuously contested through practices of juridification and litigation. Moreover, ‘participation’ is carried out through representatives who translate and discipline the multitude of survivor demands for the purposes of courts’ legal proceedings. This chapter focuses on the two groups most involved in such ‘reparational’ practices: NGO ‘intermediaries’, and victims’ legal representatives.