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International Humanitarian Law

American University Washington College of Law

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International Law

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"Use And Improve" Is My Accountability Mantra, Despite 30 Years Of Eye-Opening Disappointments, Natalie Bridgeman Fields Jan 2023

"Use And Improve" Is My Accountability Mantra, Despite 30 Years Of Eye-Opening Disappointments, Natalie Bridgeman Fields

Perspectives

This essay finds justification for championing the continued existence, functioning and evolution of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs). An inside assessment of the thirty-year functioning of IAMs reveals that inadequate power and independence are severely hampering IAM efforts to hold actors accountable for harm. Simultaneously, IAMs can’t make progress without the underlying financial institutions reforming their incentive structures to reward harm prevention and remedy. Despite decades of systemic failure to deliver accountability, when exceptions happen, they are worth it and can be spectacular. With an influx of new climate-related funding expected at the financial institutions, exceptions need to become the rule. …


The Critical Contribution Of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (Iams) To The Global Governance Paradigm, Owen Mcintyre Jan 2023

The Critical Contribution Of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (Iams) To The Global Governance Paradigm, Owen Mcintyre

Perspectives

For several decades now, the environmental and social safeguard policies adopted by international financial institutions (IFIs), along with the related accountability frameworks provided by the independent accountability mechanisms (IAMs) established by each, have been at the very forefront of a global movement to extend good environmental and social governance values to the practice of international development finance. The complex of substantive and procedural standards of institutional conduct required under multilateral development bank (MDB) safeguard policies in respect of the assessment and implementation of bank-funded development projects or activities exemplifies the phenomenon of so-called “transnational” or “global” law - the rich …


Worth The Effort?: Assessing The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Diane Orentlicher Jun 2020

Worth The Effort?: Assessing The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Every international and hybrid war crimes court has attracted a measure of controversy, but none more than the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). While myriad aspects of the ECCC’s record are crucial to its legacy, this article explores one question of overarching importance: whether its performance has justified a key risk the UN assumed when it agreed to support the court — that case selection would be improperly influenced by the Cambodian government. More particularly, it assesses the ECCC’s performance in light of two questions: How well have safeguards against political interference worked? Are survivors of Khmer …


Access To Justice For Victims Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Claudia Martin, Susana Sácouto, Susana Sacouto Jan 2020

Access To Justice For Victims Of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, Claudia Martin, Susana Sácouto, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Despite persistent impunity for conflict-related sexual violence, there have been a limited number of significant cases holding perpetrators accountable within national justice systems. One of these cases is the Sepur Zarco case, in which two former military members were accused of committing acts of sexual violence, sexual slavery and domestic slavery near a military outpost in Sepur Zarco during the civil war in Guatemala. In a landmark verdict issued in February 2016, a Guatemalan court convicted the two accused, marking the first time a Guatemalan court has convicted former military members for acts of sexual violence committed in the context …


Memories Of Judgment: Constructing The Icty's Legacies, Diane Orentlicher Jan 2020

Memories Of Judgment: Constructing The Icty's Legacies, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As the title of this symposium reflects, a critically important dimension of the Tribunal's legacy is its role in understanding the war and genocide in Bosnia. In my remarks, I want to drill down on the word "understanding," one of the most complex facets of the ICTY's legacy. In brief, I will make four points. The first is that the ICTY's expected contribution to understanding the 1990s conflict in Bosnia and the atrocities associated with that conflict was deeply important to many individuals whom I have interviewed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Serbia, about the ICTY's impact in their …


Owning Justice And Reckoning With Its Complexity, Diane Orentlicher Jan 2013

Owning Justice And Reckoning With Its Complexity, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

A series of developments, both doctrinal and political, seem to signify a retreat from earlier innovations in the law and practice of international justice. On closer examination, however, recent developments in international justice cannot be reduced to a single trend line. Even as various actors and processes continue to work out the ground rules for exercising jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that international law condemns as criminal, and as international and national courts work through the inherently challenging project of redressing mass atrocities, states have increasingly internalized, owned and acted on the principle that they should ensure accountability …


Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project?, Susana Sacouto Jan 2012

Victim Participation At The International Criminal Court And The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia: A Feminist Project?, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION: Over the last couple of decades, and particularly since 1998, incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for sexual and gender-based violence committed in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Before this, crimes committed exclusively or disproportionately against women and girls during conflict or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored, or at most, treated as secondary to other crimes. However, evidence of the large-scale and systematic use of rape in conflicts over the last two decades helped create unprecedented levels of awareness of sexual violence as a method of war and …


Amicus Curiae Brief On The Practice Of Cumulative Charging Before International Criminal Bodies Submitted To The Appeals Chamber Of The Special Tribunal For Lebanon Pursuant To Rule 131 Of The Rules Of Procedure And Evidence, Susana Sacouto Jan 2011

Amicus Curiae Brief On The Practice Of Cumulative Charging Before International Criminal Bodies Submitted To The Appeals Chamber Of The Special Tribunal For Lebanon Pursuant To Rule 131 Of The Rules Of Procedure And Evidence, Susana Sacouto

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

On 7 February 2011, President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), Antonio Cassese, issued a general invitation to, inter alia, nongovernmental organizations and academic institutions to submit briefs on specic issues related to the 15 preliminary questions addressed to the judges of the Appeals Chamber pursuant to Rule 68(G) of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence (RPE). On 11 February 2011, the War Crimes Research Oce (WCRO) of the American University Washington College of Law submitted an amicus curiae brief under Rule 131 of the RPE addressing the specific question of whether cumulative charging is an accepted practice before …


Shrinking The Space For Denial: The Impact Of The Icty In Serbia, Diane Orentlicher May 2008

Shrinking The Space For Denial: The Impact Of The Icty In Serbia, Diane Orentlicher

Reports

This groundbreaking report published by the Open Society Justice Initiative examines the impact in Serbia of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).Shrinking the Space for Denial: The Impact of the ICTY in Serbia is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the court's impact in a country directly affected by its work. The report by Diane Orentlicher, professor of international law at American University's Washington College of Law and special counsel to the Justice Initiative, is published in conjunction with the 15th anniversary of the ICTY's founding.The 134-page report provides a detailed look at the ICTY's role …


Building Victim-Led Coalitions To Press For Justice Following Mass Atrocity, Diane Orentlicher Jan 2008

Building Victim-Led Coalitions To Press For Justice Following Mass Atrocity, Diane Orentlicher

Presentations

Remarks: Assurances of victim participation in proceedings before the International Criminal Court and Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have been seen as a welcome corrective to the flawed model of earlier tribunals. The first such tribunal created since the postwar period, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was established by the UN Security Council in May 1993 without even consulting those who survived the atrocities that gave rise to its creation, the majority of which took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina.Nor were victims formally incorporated into the ICTY's work except for those who provided testimony and other …


Humanitarian Intervention: The New Missing Link In The Fight To Prevent Crimes Against Humanity And Genocide, Paul Williams Jan 2007

Humanitarian Intervention: The New Missing Link In The Fight To Prevent Crimes Against Humanity And Genocide, Paul Williams

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.


That Someone Guilty Be Punished: The Impact Of The Icty In Bosnia, Diane Orentlicher Jul 2001

That Someone Guilty Be Punished: The Impact Of The Icty In Bosnia, Diane Orentlicher

Reports

In That Someone Guilty Be Punished, Diane F. Orentlicher, professor of law at American University, looks at the effects and effectiveness of the ICTY, including lessons to improve future efforts to provide justice for survivors of atrocious crimes. Perhaps most importantly, Orentlicher examines the impact of the tribunal through the words and experiences of those in whose name it was established: the victims and survivors. Their expectations, hopes, and disappointments are chronicled alongside the tribunal’s achievements and limitations. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews—and featuring the voices and perceptions of dozens of Bosnian interlocutors—That Someone Guilty Be Punished provides …


Report On The Situation Of Roma And Sinti In The Osce Area, Diane Orentlicher Jan 2000

Report On The Situation Of Roma And Sinti In The Osce Area, Diane Orentlicher

Reports

A report on the situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE area with regard to discrimination and racial violence, education, living conditions and political participation.The Report on the Situation of Roma and Sinti in the OSCE Area contains detailed information on discrimination and racial violence, education, living conditions and political participation. It also includes recommendations on these issues.Publisher: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe available at https://www.osce.org/hcnm/32350


No Justice, No Peace: Accountability For Rape And Gender-Based Violence In The Former Yugoslavia, Diane Orentlicher Jan 1995

No Justice, No Peace: Accountability For Rape And Gender-Based Violence In The Former Yugoslavia, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Women in the Law Project of the International Human Rights Law Group (Law Group) sponsored a delegation to the former Yugoslavia from February 14 to 22, 1993. The delegation, which was also endorsed by the Bar Association of San Francisco, had two principal objectives. First, the delegation provided training in human rights fact-finding methodology to local organizations documenting rape and other violations of international law committed in the context of the armed conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnia) and in Croatia. This part of the delegation's activities, undertaken in consultation with the United Nations Commission of Experts,' sought to enhance the …


Addressing Gross Human Rights Abuses: Punishment And Victim Compensation, Diane Orentlicher Jan 1994

Addressing Gross Human Rights Abuses: Punishment And Victim Compensation, Diane Orentlicher

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.