Hello, it's nice to see you again in this module on International Criminal Courts. In this module, we'll examine a relatively new type of court in international society, namely, International Criminal Court and tribunals. The focus of this module will lie with the International Criminal Court, also called the ICC. The ICC is the first permanent international criminal court and it has universal aspirations. Yet, in this first video, we will start with some reflections on the origins of international criminal courts and on the relations of international criminal law in the 1990's. This first video will offer you insight into the family of International Criminal Court and tribunals, and the foundations of the ICC. At the same time, the historical perspective given in this video will enable you to contrast the ICC with its predecessors and to spot differences between different courts in different eras. So I invite you to pause this video now and to write down three differences between the ICC and the Nuremberg Tribunal. At the end of the video you will find the answer. The leading question of this module is, where does the future of international criminal law lie, with the ICC, the domestic courts, or elsewhere? Perhaps, with regional courts, but before we dive into the future, let's look back at the history to appreciate the setting in which a concept of International Criminal Court was born. Examples of criminal trials with an international feature date back centuries, but the most immediate forerunners of the ICC are the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. As you will know, those two tribunals were established after the second World War to deal specifically with Nazi and Japanese crimes. The central charge at both tribunals concerned the waging of aggressive war, also called the crime against peace. The Nuremberg and Tokyo Judgements are still influential today and they thus constitute important precedence. Nonetheless, the greatest criticism voiced against the two tribunals was that they are symbols of victor's justice as they prosecuted only one side and left crimes of the allies unaddressed. We will find out in this module that selective critiques are still present in the practice of international criminal courts also today. After Nuremberg and Tokyo, there were a number of sporadic trials at the domestic level in national courts, like the Eichmann case in Israel in the early 1960s. But apart from those exceptional cases, international criminal law lay largely dormant. It was only after the end of the Cold War in the beginning of the 1990s that the idea of international criminal courts was revived, giving rise to the renaissance of international criminal law. It was in fact the UN Security Council which acted as midwife for international criminal law's rebirth. In response to the conflict in a former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, the security council decided to establish ad hoc the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTY. One year later a similar tribunal was established for Rwanda to make up for the international community's failure to act during the 1994 genocides It was called the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTR. The Yugoslavia tribunal, the ICTY, was based in the La Hague, while the Rwanda tribunal, the ICTR, was based in Arusha Tanzania. The two ad hoc tribunals were established ex post facto, meaning after the crimes had already been committed, just like the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. They were also possessed of limited jurisdiction in geographic and temporal terms, which means that only crimes committed in a specific area and time frame could be prosecuted at those tribunals. Yet, the substantive jurisdiction, so the crimes prosecuted at the ad-hoc tribunals, differed from there after. Aggression, also called the crime against peace, was not part of the crime catalog, but genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes were. Genocide was a central charge in most, if not, all ICTR cases. While many ICTY indictments featured persecution as a crime against humanity. One important heritage emanating from both tribunals Regards their attention for sexual violence and gender based crimes, which were ignored in Nuremberg and Tokyo. In the Akayesu case, the ICTR held that rape could also be a genocidal act. Landmark case on sexual violence at the ICTY are amongst others the Furundzija case and the Kunarac case, but also the very first ICTY case against Tadic, which dealt with sexual violence against men. As indicated the ad hoc tribunals were established by the Security Council and the council did so acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Decisions made under Chapter VII are binding in all UN member states and hence the tribunal was imposed on the territorial states where the crimes had been committed. So the states of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda respectively were obliged to cooperate and accept the tribunal. Even beyond those things, all the UN member states have any obligation to cooperate with the ICTY and the ICTR. This means that all states have a duty to surrender suspects if asked to do so, and to share evidence. In the sense, the ad hoc tribunals required unique. Since as you know from previous modules international courts are generally fully integrated in the consensual structure of the international legal system. Which means that it is normally up to states to decide whether they consent to jurisdiction of the court and to concrete obligations to cooperate. The mandatory regimes of the ICTY and the ICTR are thus quite exceptional. This may have been inspired by the circumstances and goals for which they were established. The institution inquiry into adequate mechanisms to apply into international criminal law is linked to a more substantive debate on the goals of international criminal justice. So what were these goals and what are the goals the International Criminal Report were generating? As noted by the UN Secretary General in his 2004 report on the Rule of Law and Transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies. International criminal tribunals have been established to advance myriad goals. These include bringing those responsible for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law to justice, putting an end to such violations, and preventing their recurrence. They also include securing justice and dignity for victims, establishing a record for past events, and promoting national reconciliation. Furthermore we think of re-establishing the rule of law, de-legitimizing extremist elements and contributing to the restoration of peace. Obviously, as the Secretary General also noted, achieving all these various objectives and balancing them in a context of transition is not straightforward in any way. It is thus important to mitigate our expectations of what international criminal tribunals can reasonably achieve, and in addition, we must understand that there is no one size fits all model. In the 1990s, after the establishment of the ICTY and the ICTR The international community also experimented with so called hybrid tribunals. Like the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. These tribunals mixed the international with the national in terms of the applicable law and the individuals involved in the proceedings, particularly judiciary. The Special Court for Sierra Leone deserves special mention in this course on Hague courts since one of the cases was held in La Hague security reasons. This was the case of Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia. Lastly, we should mention the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is rather especially generous, one of a kind and we will discuss this tribunal in more detail in another video. Quite soon after and during the establishment of all these different international courts and tribunals, an awareness arose that establishing distinct courts for each new situation, and doing this ex post facto, had a certain touch of arbitrariness, and was practically inefficient. Hence the seas were zoned for the idea permanent International Criminal Court, the ICC. We will discuss this new institution in more depths in the next video. In the ICC era in which we now live, there is important role for domestics courts to act as agents of the international community and to some extent, the future of international criminal law does lie with the domestic boards. In addition though, we can witness another trend and this is the revival of the concept of hybrid courts. There seems to be a new generation of hybrid tribunals which is each different in its design and tailor made for a situation. Examples of existing or potential new hybrid tribunals concern the hybrid trial in Senegal, and proposals for hybrid courts in South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Syria. Intertwined with this development, we also witnessed that regional organizations are increasingly active players, including the African Union and the European Union. I hope you appreciate by now that international criminal law is a pluralistic area of law. It has multiple goals, and people hold different expectations. There's also a variety of different courts of law in it. Nonetheless, the ICC and it's statute remains central. Which is why we will discuss this court in the next video. I hope to see you there.
