North American law has been transformed in ways unimaginable before 9/11. Laws now authorise and courts have condoned indefinite detention without charge on secret evidence, mass secret surveillance, and targeted killing of U.S. citizens, suggesting a shift in the cultural currency of a liberal form of legality to authoritarian legality. This book demonstrates that extreme measures have been consistently embraced in politics, scholarship, and public opinion in a specific belief that 9/11 was the harbinger of a new order of terror.

This book is a practical guide for advocates interested in the representation of victims before the International Criminal Court (ICC). It has been developed by experts responsible for the advocacy training of the International Criminal Court's List of Counsel members. Written in a readily accessible style, this guide provides a firm grounding in relevant legal doctrine, essential advocacy techniques and valuable multidisciplinary perspectives. Drawing upon global expertise from legal practitioners, specialist advocacy trainers and multi-disciplinary writers, this book addresses both practical considerations and key challenges faced by ICC victim advocates. These include issues such as gender, child victims, victims of sexual violence, special need victims and victims who are themselves implicated in international crimes. Through its practical focus on advocacy techniques, hypothetical case studies, checklists, interviews from the field and lists of further resources, this manual equips readers with the knowledge and skills necessary to engage in sophisticated ICC victim advocacy. This book will also appeal to those interested in the workings of International Criminal Law and in victim advocacy and victimology more broadly.

The United Nations has established a right to the truth to be enjoyed by victims of gross violations of human rights. The origins of the right stem from the need to provide victims and relatives of the missing with a right to know what happened. It encompasses the verification and full public disclosure of the facts associated with the crimes from which they or their relatives suffered. The importance of the right to the truth is based on the belief that, by disclosing the truth, the suffering of victims is alleviated. This book analyses the emergence of this right, as a response to an understanding of the needs of victims, through to its development and application in two particular legal contexts: international human rights law and international criminal justice. The book examines in detail the application of the right through the case law and jurisprudence of international tribunals in the human rights and also the criminal justice context, as well as looking at its place in transitional justice. The theoretical foundations of the right to the truth are considered as well as the various objectives appropriate for different truth-seeking mechanisms. The book then goes on to discuss to what extent it can be understood, constructed and applied as a hard, legally enforceable right with correlating duties on various people and institutions including state agencies, prosecutors and judges.

The book analyses the difficulties the International Criminal Court faces with the definition of those persons who are eligible for participating in the proceedings. Establishing justice for victims is one of the most important aims of the court. It therefore created a unique system of victim participation. Since its first trial the court struggles to live up to the expectancies its statute has generated. The book offers a new approach of how to define victimhood by looking at the different international crimes. It seeks to offer guidance for the right to participate in the different stages of the proceedings by looking at the practice in national jurisdictions. Lastly the book offers insights into the functioning of the reparation regime at the ICC by virtue of the Trust Fund for Victim and its different mandates. The critical analysis of the ICC-practice with regard to definition, participation and reparation aims at promoting a realistic approach, which will avoid the disappointing of expectations and thus help to enhance the acceptance of the ICC.

This volume considers a variety of key issues pertaining to the rights of defendants and victims at International Criminal Courts (ICTs) and explores how best to balance and enhance the rights of both in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of international criminal proceedings. The rights of victims are becoming an increasingly important issue at ICTs. Yet, at the same time, this has to be achieved without having a detrimental impact upon on the rights of the defence and the efficiency of the courts. This book provides analyses of issues on the rights of both the accused and the victims. By discussing matters concerning these two pivotal actors in international criminal justice within the same volume, the work highlights that there are intrinsic and intense conflicting and converging relationships between victims and the accused, particularly in terms of their rights. While most of the chapters focus mainly on either the accused or the victims, others discuss both at the same time. The work strikes a fine balance between, on the one hand, classic topics on the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims and, on the other, topics which have been largely unexplored and/or which require new angles or perspectives. Additionally, there are some chapters which approach both the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims in new contexts and/or under novel perspectives. The book as a whole provides a discussion of the two sides of this important coin of international criminal justice. The work will be an essential resource for academics, practitioners and students with an interest in the field of international criminal law. It will also be of interest to human rights scholars who are working with the rights of victims and the accused.

Many prosecutors and commentators have praised the victim provisions at the International Criminal Court (ICC) as 'justice for victims', which for the first time include participation, protection and reparations. This book critically examines the role of victims in international criminal justice, drawing from human rights, victimology, and best practices in transitional justice. Drawing on field research in Northern Uganda, Luke Moffet explores the nature of international crimes and assesses the role of victims in the proceedings of the ICC, paying particular attention to their recognition, participation, reparations and protection. The book argues that because of the criminal nature and structural limitations of the ICC, justice for victims is symbolic, requiring State Parties to complement the work of the Court to address victims' needs. In advancing an innovative theory of justice for victims, and in offering solutions to current challenges, the book will be of great interest and use to academics, practitioners and students engaged in victimology, the ICC, transitional justice, or reparations.

This scholarly legal work focuses on the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes under the statutes of the international criminal tribunals with reference to the principle of fair labelling. In this book Hilmi M. Zawati explains how the abstractness and lack of accurate description of gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and courts infringe the principle of fair labelling, lead to inconsistent verdicts and punishments, and cause inadequate prosecution of these crimes. This inquiry deals with gender-based crimes as a case study, and with fair labelling as a legal principle and a theoretical framework. Critical and timely, this study contributes to existing scholarship in many different ways. It is the first legal analysis to focus on the dilemma of prosecuting and punishing wartime gender-based crimes in the statutory laws of the international criminal tribunals and the ICC in the context of fair labelling. Moreover, it emphasizes that applying fair labelling to wartime gender-based crimes would enable the tribunals and the ICC to deliver fair judgments, eliminate inconsistent prosecution, overcome shortcomings in addressing gender-based crimes within their jurisprudence, while breaking the cycle of impunity for these crimes. Consisting of two parts, this work begins by outlining the central focus and theoretical legal framework of the study. It concentrates on fair labelling as an imperative legal principle and a legal framework, examines its intellectual development, scope and justification, and illustrates its applicability to gender-based crimes. The second part addresses the dilemma of prosecuting gender-based crimes in the international criminal tribunals.