Drawing on crystallizing trends in State's practice in respect of amnesty, this book provides a comprehensive legal framework within which grants of amnesty can be reconciled with the duty to prosecute core crimes under international law.

This book contains a comprehensive and well-researched study of the relationship between municipal amnesty laws and developing principles of international criminal law. It pursues a path towards defining criteria for reconciling these two delicate fields of transitional justice. It concludes with a concrete proposal for the international community of states.

In this polemical book, the author presents a rigorous legal analysis of national amnesty laws - often called transitional or transformative justice - that seek to exculpate human rights violators from liability for criminal conduct under both national and international law. A model is developed for distinguishing legally sustainable national amnesty laws from unsustainable ones - the VANPAJR test. The author concludes that any scope of national amnesty laws to expunge criminal or civil liability of human rights violators is ultimately unsustainable under international law.

Amnesty, Serious Crimes and International Law examines the permissibility of amnesties for serious crimes in the contemporary international order. In the last few decades, there has been a growing tendency to consider that amnesties are prohibited in respect of certain grave crimes. However, the question remains controversial as there is no explicit treaty ban and general amnesties continue to be frequently issued in post-conflict and transitional contexts. The first part of the book explores the use of amnesties from antiquity to the present day. It reviews amnesty traditions in ancient societies and provides a global picture of modern amnesties. In parallel, it traces the development of the accountability paradigm underpinning the current prohibitive stance on amnesties. The second part assesses the position of modern international law on amnesties. It comprehensively analyses the main arguments supporting the existence of a general amnesty ban, including the duty to prosecute international crimes, the right to redress of victims of human rights violations, international standards and trends in state practice, and the mandate of international criminal courts. The book argues that, while international legal or policy requirements restrict the freedom of states to extend amnesty in respect of serious crimes, or the effectiveness of amnesty measures in preventing the prosecution of such crimes, these restrictions do not add up to an absolute and universal prohibition.

This book is about amnesties for grave international crimes that states adopt in moments of transition or social unrest. The subject is naturally controversial, especially in the age of the International Criminal Court. The goal of this book is to reframe and revitalise the global debate on the subject and to offer an original framework for resolving amnesty dilemmas when they arise. Most literature and jurisprudence on amnesties deal with only a small subset of state practice and sidestep the ambiguity of amnesty's position under international law. This book addresses the ambiguity head on and argues that amnesties of the broadest scope are sometimes defensible when adopted as a last recourse in contexts of mass violence. Drawing on an extensive amnesty database, the book offers detailed guidance on how to ensure that amnesties extend the minimum leniency possible, while imposing the maximum accountability on the beneficiaries.

This edited volume brings together well-established and emerging scholars of transitional justice to discuss the persistence of amnesty in the age of human rights accountability. The volume attempts to reframe debates, moving beyond the limited approaches of 'truth versus justice' or 'stability versus accountability' in which many of these issues have been cast in the existing scholarship. The theoretical and empirical contributions in this book offer new ways of understanding and tackling the enduring persistence of amnesty in the age of accountability. In addition to cross-national studies, the volume encompasses eleven country cases of amnesty for past human rights violations: Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Uganda and Uruguay. The volume goes beyond merely describing these case studies, but also considers what we learn from them in terms of overcoming impunity and promoting accountability to contribute to improvements in human rights and democracy.

This book assesses developments in international law and seeks to end impunity by bringing to justice those accused of crimes against humanity.