International Criminal Justice Between Scylla and Charybdis—the “Peace Versus Justice” Dilemma Analysed Through the Lenses of Judith Shklar’s and Hannah Arendt’s Legal and Political Theories

The present article discusses the “peace versus justice” dilemma in international criminal justice through the lenses of the respective legal (and political) theories of Judith Shklar and Hannah Arendt—two thinkers who have recently been described as theorists of international criminal law. The article claims that in interventions carried out by the International Criminal Court (ICC), there is an ever-present potentiality for the “peace versus justice” dilemma to occur. Unfortunately, there is no abstract solution to this problem, insofar as ICC interventions will in some cases be conducive while in others, they will be deleterious to peace. If a tension between peace and justice arises in a particular case, the article asserts, the former must be prioritised over the latter. Such a prioritisation, however, requires a vision of the ICC as a flexible actor of world politics which is situated at the intersection of law, ethics and politics, rather than a strictly legalistic view of the court. Ultimately, then, the present article seeks to probe whether the legal and political theories of Shklar and Arendt—in isolation, but ultimately also in combination—support such a flexible vision of the ICC.     

Human rights education in US social work: Is the mandate reaching the field?

Abstract

Social work education in the United States takes place not only in classrooms but also in the many workplaces where students complete their mandatory internships. This practicum, known as “field education,” is social work’s “signature pedagogy.” Although efforts have been made to integrate human rights education (HRE) into US social work education and the Council on Social Work Education now mandates a human rights competency, little research has examined how and whether the HRE mandate is implemented in field education. This article examines the impact of HRE on social work field education by focusing on one state—Florida. For this study, we surveyed 158 Florida field educators about their human rights knowledge and practices and conducted telephone interviews with the staff members who coordinate student internships at six social work schools. The data paint a complex picture. Although strides to foster students’ ability to apply human rights understanding in field education have been made, sustained institutional support for integrating HRE in field is needed at the university and associational level. True integration of HRE into field education will only be achieved when all educators receive the support they need to become educated on social work as a human rights practice.     

The “Phantom Local” and the Everyday Distinction Practices of Humanitarian Actors in War: A Socio-Legal Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned the everyday practices of international humanitarian actors who deliver assistance in armed conflict zones. Drawing on original fieldwork conducted in South Sudan, it elucidates how humanitarian actors engage with the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law (IHL). The article considers how the desire to enforce distinction impacts humanitarian actors’ relationships with others, and introduces the concept of everyday distinction practices. These practices have an important performance component, designed to appease the “phantom local.” It is proposed that such practices may have adverse implications for the humanitarian–beneficiary encounter. By positioning war-affected populations as an audience for distinction, everyday distinction practices reconfigure the victims of war from being receivers of aid to perceivers of aid. By lumping beneficiaries together with armed actors as part of the “phantom local,” distinction practices also paint the victims of war as an object of mistrust, fear, and potential danger.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

An Imperative to Act: Boarding the Relief Flights of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Biafra (1967–1970)

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) humanitarian politics of intervention during its relief operation in the Nigeria–Biafra conflict (1967–1970). The humanitarian response to the conflict was a foundational moment for everyday humanitarianism marking a shift from “traditional” state-oriented humanitarianism to an expansion in scope, actors, and practices operating outside of the formal structures of the state. By examining recently declassified archival records, I trace the ICRC’s shifting categorizations of victims in a changing humanitarian landscape. The article makes two main contributions: First, I demonstrate empirically how the Nigeria–Biafra conflict challenged the ICRC’s definition of humanitarian engagement and understandings of victimhood. Second, I argue that the ICRC had a clearer understanding than usually conveyed of how the Biafran leadership used the language of humanitarianism and victimhood to deploy an international response. Conclusively, I reflect on what the history of the ICRC in Biafra can teach scholars of contemporary humanitarianism.     

Victims’ Rights and Distributive Justice: In Search of Actors

The aim of this article is to discuss the role that victim groups and organizations may have in framing and supporting an accountability agenda, as well as their potential for endorsing a distributive justice agenda. The article explores two empirical cases where victims' rights have been introduced and applied by victim organizations to promote accountability—Colombia and Peru. It will be argued that if transitional justice in general and victim reparations in particular are to embark in a quest for distributive justice, it cannot do so without considering victims as political actors, and putting forward demands in terms of victims’ rights.     

Multiple imaginations of the state: understanding a mobile conflict about justice and accountability from the perspective of Assyrian–Syriac communities

This article examines how the struggle for the recognition of genocide in the twentieth century opens up a political space which, on the one hand, generates historical discourses and imaginaries about the categories of victim and perpetrator and, on the other hand, redefines relationships between the state and its minority citizens. Genocide becomes a ‘critical event’, in the sense of Veena Das, that citizens from different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds use to express their positions concerning the repressive state practices they have been victims of. This expression creates a collective space of solidarity where parties support each other by adopting similar strategies in the struggle for state accountability. At the same time, it opens up a space for negotiation among the state, minority citizens and migrant communities regarding claims to rights and justice.     

Discovering the New Face of Sovereignty: Complementarity and the International Criminal Court

This article examines the socially constructed nature of sovereignty in order to ascertain a more empirically based understanding of the role that this concept plays in the current postinternational order. In particular, it analyzes the practice of sovereignty in the construction of the newly forming International Criminal Court (ICC). In an attempt to understand the relationship between sovereignty and the ICC, the article addresses the following questions. Does the ICC undermine the principles of state sovereignty? What are the implications of this institution on sovereignty? Finally, can we consider the authority structure of the ICC a new form of sovereignty?     

Stultifying Politics Today: The “Natural Science” Model in American Political Science—How is it Natural,Science, and a Model?

This article “follows the actors” to examine the high regard for “the natural science model” in contemporary American political science. How this model is accepted as a science remains an ongoing struggle for epistemic control. This conflict shapes ideological and institutional struggles over who dictates to whom how the “study of politics” is conducted in evolving mainstream professional networks as well as civil society at large given the organizational dynamics of the contemporary American research university. These approaches to “studying politics today” also appear to be “stultifying politics today” inasmuch as this putative methodological objectivity exerts a dulling effect on civic discourse, political vision, and active citizenship.     

Witness to Rape: The Limits and Potential of International War Crimes Trials for Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence

¹Despite the proliferation of trauma and memory research inrecent years, we know very little about the contribution oftransitional justice mechanisms to psychological healing andsocietal reconciliation in the aftermath of genocide, armedconflict and politicized violence. Many scholars in this areahave argued that the disclosure of traumatic experiences isbeneficial to the psychological recovery process for survivorsof gross human rights violations. This article critically examinesthis therapeutic assumption within a transitional justice paradigm.The article explores the potentials and limitations of internationalwar crimes trials for victims of wartime sexual violence, focusingspecifically on the International Criminal Tribunal for theformer Yugoslavia (ICTY). The article provides a theoreticalframework for analyzing the significance of testimony at internationalwar crimes trials and raises some critical questions relatedto the psychological impact of trials. It is argued that dueto the sheer diversity and heterogeneity of wartime rape victims,the experience of giving testimony is likely to be mixed: whilesome victims may suffer under the constraints of legal process,under the right circumstances, war crimes trials may help othersto make sense of their suffering.     

Empty promises: Indonesia's non-ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Southeast Asia is one of the most underrepresented regions in the International Criminal Court (ICC). I address the question of non-ratification of the Rome Statute with a case study on Indonesia. While the Yudhoyono Administration has repeatedly promised to join the ICC, ratification has not materialized. I argue that Indonesia's tradition of emphasizing the protection of state sovereignty and economic gains in its foreign policy decisions best explains why it remains outside the ICC's jurisdiction. I test this claim by exploring Indonesia's human rights record, potential legal restrictions for the ratification of the Rome Statute, and the influence of domestic political players and external pressures.     

(Sex) Crime and Punishment in the #MeToo Era: How the Public Views Rape

One of the core tasks of a well-functioning state is providing fair and adequate criminal justice. Recent events have raised concerns that the US exhibits a “culture of rape,” wherein victims are often disbelieved and blamed. Scholars have not yet examined how the public understands rape and how it should be punished, despite the important role that public pressure has played in the #MeToo era. We present an empirical conceptualization of rape culture to generate predictions for how various attributes of rape incidents affect the likelihood that they are perceived as punishable crimes. In a series of conjoint experiments, we demonstrate that details relating to the victim’s consent and credibility significantly decrease participants’ propensities to support reporting to police or to recommend a severe punishment for the perpetrator. The results show that emphasizing certain legally irrelevant features of rape strongly affect whether the public views an incident as severe or worthy of punishment.

     

Contested governance: The new repertoire of the Eurozone crisis

The austerity policies that EU policymakers adopted in response to the Eurozone crisis are often criticized as the product of institutionalized neoliberal ideas. This critique has merits, but tends to overlook institutional changes that do not neatly conform to well demarcated neoliberal ideas considered as “switchmen,” “paradigms,” or “blueprints.” This article offers an alternative reading of the Eurozone's institutional evolution that bridges pragmatist scholarship with cognitive and social psychology. The Eurozone crisis saw the emergence of a new and contested repertoire of governance. Policymakers agreed that “stronger governance” was necessary, but they struggled over how to perform that repertoire. This contest ultimately produced institutional changes that typically mixed austerity and unconventional policies. The advantage of thinking about ideas in terms of repertoires that actors perform is to afford a more granular view of institutions as sites of individual cognition, collective innovation, and political contestation.     

The chameleon of mens rea and the shifting guises of culture-specific genocidal intent in international criminal proceedings

This article examines the significance of the mens rea-related evidence present in the specific language and discourse identified in the records of the International Military Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The author argues that international proceedings have seen the emergence of a new type of evidence: a cognitive, linguistic, culturally determined plural of genocidal mens rea. As a result, the mental element of genocidal intent can neither be interpreted nor understood without an advanced forensic approach to the language used by the network of génocidaires. Based on a combination of cognitive and social science research with the humanities, the article applies a hybrid method of analysis to some of the genocide cases in international criminal justice and demonstrates how and why this approach ought to be introduced into the process of identification of the guilty minds of the architects of genocide.     

Rejecting “rights-based approaches” to development: Alternative engagements with human rights

Following the growth of “rights-based approaches,” an increasing trend within recent research has been to establish the diverse opportunities, challenges, and potential pitfalls such approaches offer development NGOs. Although these areas remain important to current policy and practice, they equally stifle further research that is required concerning alternative engagements with human rights. This article argues that closer attention must be directed towards understanding how and why numerous development NGOs have rejected such approaches, whilst also embedding a strong and strategic use of “rights talk” within everyday campaign practice. This article draws upon recent qualitative research into practitioner responses to “rights-based” and wider human rights practice and, in so doing, enlists an in-depth analysis of two distinct subcategories of development NGOs — “faith-based” and “political.” The article proposes two current “perspectives” on human rights practice and a new and alternative engagement with a discourse of rights.     

Putting “Traditional Values” Into Practice: The Rise and Contestation of Anti-Homopropaganda Laws in Russia

This article explores how “traditional values” are being used by the Russian government to refute the claim that “LGBT rights are human rights” and justify the introduction of anti-homopropaganda laws, and how members of the Russian LGBT community have sought to contest it. Centrally, it traces the development of a discourse that refutes the essentialization of sexual identity and, in doing so, seeks to challenge the focus on individual identity-based rights of contemporary human rights norms. This discursive shift has meant that opponents of the legislation have had to develop contestation strategies that collectively seek to present an alternative interpretation of “traditional values.” The article concludes by considering the implications of the Russian case for human rights norms and for the notion of universal human rights more widely, arguing that it represents a serious challenge to the viability of identity-based LGBT rights claims as a basis on which to advance observance of fundamental human rights due to their homonormativity.     

The Interventionist Turn of UN Peacekeeping: New Western Politics of Protection or Bureaucratic Mission Creep?

During recent years, the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping system has exerted robust interventions in the domestic jurisdiction of target states for human rights purposes. The existing literature attributes the explanation mainly to the “new politics of protection” pursued by Western governments and thus validates the realist hypothesis. This article analyzes the Côte d'Ivoire and Haiti cases to demonstrate that not only government policies (the realist hypothesis) but also independent bureaucratic powers exerted by senior UN officials (the social constructivist thesis) have contributed to the emergence of interventionist policies at the UN. Moreover, “bottom-up” initiatives stemming from the virtue ethics of senior UN officials have played a much more decisive role in generating the interventionist turn than “top-down” institutional guidelines and doctrines, such as the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) principle. Instead of RtoP, UN officials draw upon broad legitimating principles of the UN, notably human security, to justify their interventionist policies.     

Sexual orientation and gender identity in Nepal: Rights promotion through UN development assistance

United Nations (UN) development agencies have been actively working to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights in Nepal, despite having no official mandate to work on these rights. This presents an important example of how such agencies are able to act independently to set their own agenda and illustrates the “open system” approach to international bureaucracies. It also suggests that these agencies have the potential to be important instruments of LGBTI rights promotion outside the traditional human rights machinery such as the Human Rights Council and various committees. Based on extensive interview research as well as documentary evidence, this article traces the origins of the UN's engagement with LGBTI rights. It then discusses the work of UN agencies in South Asia, and Nepal in particular, focusing on the UN Development Programme, the UN Children's Fund, UNAIDS, and UN Women. Political changes in Nepal since 2006 have opened it up for change in its approach to these rights, and UN agencies have worked actively to change both legal norms and social attitudes. The conclusion considers whether these lessons are applicable to other states and whether the UN development machinery must be considered an important ally in pursuing LGBTI rights worldwide.     

Crisis Management in the Catholic Church: Lessons for Public Administrators

The Catholic Church offers a timely, significant case study of institutional failure. Looking at an in‐depth examination of the sex abuse scandal conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the author discusses how the church crisis relates to classic public administration and crisis management theory. Given the similarities between the church and the government as public bureaucratic institutions, public administrations have much to learn from the case. Lessons include immediately sharing harsh truths with the public, accepting the stark realities of higher “public” expectations, establishing appropriate accountability systems, and fostering trust by building close community relationships. It is equally important to consider that church leaders neither fully considered nor absorbed key lessons from existing administrative theory. Concepts such as inappropriate organizational culture, bureaucracy, technicism, and goal displacement often blind leaders to adopting best practices based on well‐established theory.     

Providing justice and reconciliation: The criminal tribunals for Sierra Leone and Cambodia

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Extraordinary Chambers for Cambodia (ECC) represent a departure from the model established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yygoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The SCSL and the ECC have often been referred to as “mixed” or “hybrid” tribunals in which there are significant domestic and international components. The tribunals include a combination of domestic and international judges, utilize domestic and international laws and are administered by a prosecutorial team composed of domestic and international lawyers. Many of these institutional changes have been brought about because of criticisms of the ICTY and the ICTR. The fundamental question of this article is whether these mixed tribunals are a more effective mechanism for providing justice and reconciliation than purely international solutions. This is an important question because both the international community and states are moving in the direction of mixed tribunals.