This book reflects a primary response by international civil society to US disregard for international law. It is a damning indictment of the Hiroshimas of our time. It provides a cogent elaboration of the international legal values to be defended, for humanity to triumph over the new wave of global barbarism brought about by the efforts of the United States to consolidate and extend the dimensions of its empire. Once the champion of the United Nations, the United States now skirts the Geneva Conventions, uses international humanitarian law as a pretext for intervention, engages in bombardments causing grave civilian losses, seeks to expand its options in relation to torture while continuing to render prisoners to countries known for its practice. Having failed in its effort to block the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the United States still refuses to ratify its Statute--even though the ICC Statute modified the rules of the 1977 Geneva Protocol and The Hague in an effort to satisfy the trajectory pursued by U.S. foreign policy. The United States' pursuit of a unilateral imperial policy based on military force destroys the credibility of the nascent international legal framework. Rather, the US is leading the world by example toward a future without rules or values, where humanity is subject to the whims of the more powerful. Former government officials, scholars, advocates and directors of international organizations operating at the highest level in the areas of international humanitarian law address the relevant international law, the threats thereto by US policy, its ramifications for the world system, and possible avenues of legal recourse.

This volume reviews the achievements and limitations of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the creation of mixed national/international courts: the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Cambodia Tribunal. The major, unexpected and promising judiciary innovation is however the creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998, supported by the UN, European Union members and other countries, effectively promoted by NGOs, but strongly opposed by the USA. The Court will have to show that it is a fair and valuable instrument in fighting impunity at the international level.

The period immediately following Kenya's 2007 presidential election left a shocking trail of atrocities, with over 1,000 people dead and countless thousands left victimised and displaced. In response, the International Criminal Court began a series of investigations and trials, promising no impunity for even the highest ranking perpetrators. When the country's president and vice-president were implicated in the crimes, the case took on worldwide significance. The International Criminal Court and the End of Impunity in Kenya is a five-year study addressing critical human rights issues with a global reach and is the first detailed account of the ICC's intervention in Kenya. It probes the relationship between the ICC and state institutions, known as positive complementarity, and asks whether the ICC's intervention led to an end to impunity. The author provides comprehensive analysis of the Waki Commission's sealed envelope, the government's attempts to establish a special tribunal and the trials in The Hague. He also provides in depth consideration of any influence the ICC's intervention may have had on the passing of a new constitution, the establishment of a truth commission and important reforms to the judiciary, police and witness protection programme. Documenting the effects of these interventions on the Kenyan people, and on the country's legal and judicial systems, the book provides vital lessons in global justice as it: •Details the ICC's involvement in Kenya in the aftermath of extreme violence and instability •Evaluates the ICC prosecutor's strategy of positive complementarity •Identifies optimal conditions for positive complementarity to be effective •Links cultures of impunity to state-sponsored corruption •Explores the possible impact of the ICC on national and global policy •Discusses implications in responding to future crimes against humanity Replete with official government sources, The International Criminal Court and the End of Impunity in Kenya is necessary reading for researchers and practitioners working in public international law, particularly those specialising in conflict and post-conflict states.

Over the course of the long and violent twentieth century, only a minority of international crime perpetrators ever stood trial, and a central challenge of this era was the effort to ensure that not all these crimes remained unpunished. This required not only establishing a legal record but also courage, determination, and inventiveness in realizing justice. Defeating Impunity moves from the little-known trials of the 1920s to the Yugoslavia tribunal in the 2000s, from Belgium in 1914 to Ukraine in 1943, and to Stuttgart and Düsseldorf in 1975. It illustrates the extent to which the language of law drew an international horizon of justice.

This volume presents and critiques the distorted effects of the international human rights movement's focus on the fight against impunity.

Bringing together leading experts in the field, this volume provides comprehensive academic commentary on the UN Principles to Combat Impunity. The book features the text of each of the 38 Principles, along with a full analysis, detailed commentary, and a guide to relevant literature and case law.

An eyewitness account of the first major international war-crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg trials, Twilight of Impunity is a gripping guide to the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The historic trial of the “Butcher of the Balkans” began in 2002 and ended abruptly with Milosevic’s death in 2006. Judith Armatta, a lawyer who spent three years in the former Yugoslavia during Milosevic’s reign, had a front-row seat at the trial. In Twilight of Impunity she brings the dramatic proceedings to life, explains complex legal issues, and assesses the trial’s implications for victims of the conflicts in the Balkans during the 1990s and international justice more broadly. Armatta acknowledges the trial’s flaws, particularly Milosevic’s grandstanding and attacks on the institutional legitimacy of the International Criminal Tribunal. Yet she argues that the trial provided an indispensable legal and historical narrative of events in the former Yugoslavia and a valuable forum where victims could tell their stories and seek justice. It addressed crucial legal issues, such as the responsibility of commanders for crimes committed by subordinates, and helped to create a framework for conceptualizing and organizing other large-scale international criminal tribunals. The prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague was an important step toward ending impunity for leaders who perpetrate egregious crimes against humanity.

In Infrastructures of Impunity Elizabeth F. Drexler argues that the creation and persistence of impunity for the perpetrators of the Cold War Indonesian genocide (1965–66) is not only a legal status but also a cultural and social process. Impunity for the initial killings and for subsequent acts of political violence has many elements: bureaucratic, military, legal, political, educational, and affective. Although these elements do not always work at once—at times some are dormant while others are ascendant—together they can be described as a unified entity, a dynamic infrastructure, whose existence explains the persistence of impunity. For instance, truth telling, a first step in many responses to state violence, did not undermine the infrastructure but instead bent to it. Creative and artistic responses to revelations about the past, however, have begun to undermine the infrastructure by countering its temporality, affect, and social stigmatization and demonstrating its contingency and specific actions, policies, and processes that would begin to dismantle it. Drexler contends that an infrastructure of impunity could take hold in an established democracy.

The End of Corruption and Impunity argues that it is feasible to limit the corruption that plagues developing regions of the world by implementing an international treaty designed to combat dysfunctional criminal justice systems and restore human rights.