The Right to The Truth in International Law

The Right to The Truth in International Law
Author: Melanie Klinkner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2019-07-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317335082

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.

International Law of Victims

International Law of Victims
Author: Carlos Fernández de Casadevante Romani
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2012-07-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3642281400

After having ignored victims, only recently both domestic and international law have begun to pay attention to them. As a consequence, different international norms related to victims have progressively been introduced. These are norms generally characterized by a certain concept from the perspective of victims, as well as by the enumeration of a list of rights to which they are entitle to; rights upon which the international statute of victims is built. In reverse, these catalogues of rights are the states’ obligations. Most of these rights are already existent in the international law of human rights. Consequently, they are not new but consolidated rights. Others are strictly linked to victims, concerning the following categories: victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law, victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of violations of international criminal law and victims of terrorism.

Victims of International Crimes: An Interdisciplinary Discourse

Victims of International Crimes: An Interdisciplinary Discourse
Author: Thorsten Bonacker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2013-07-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9067049123

In international law victims' issues have gained more and more attention over the last decades. In particular in transitional justice processes the victim is being given high priority. It is to be seen in this context that the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court foresees a rather excessive victim participation concept in criminal prosecution. In this volume issue is taken at first with the definition of victims, and secondly with the role of the victim as a witness and as a participant. Several chapters address this matter with a view to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Trial against Demjanjuk in Germany. In a third part the interests of the victims outside the criminal trial are being discussed. In the final part the role of civil society actors are being tackled. This volume thus gives an overview of the role of victims in transitional justice processes from an interdisciplinary angle, combining academic research and practical experience.

Redress for Victims of Crimes Under International Law

Redress for Victims of Crimes Under International Law
Author: Ilaria Bottigliero
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9401760276

Paradoxically, victims of ordinary crimes such as fraud, theft or assault, can obtain redress through regular domestic channels, whereas victims of such major atrocities as genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity, have been left mostly uncompensated. Until recently, a pervasive climate of impunity for international crimes relegated victims to the political and legal periphery. Over the last few years however, the international community has begun to recognize that, just as crimes under international law cannot be considered ordinary crimes, victims of these crimes cannot be considered ordinary victims. In this book, Dr. Bottigliero explores the origins, evolution and practice relating to victims' redress in domestic law, regional and universal human rights regimes, humanitarian law, the law of State responsibility, United Nations practice, and international criminal law including the International Criminal Court. She argues that the international community must now move beyond incomplete and fragmented approaches towards a much more comprehensive redress regime for victims of crimes under international law, and she recommends means by which to enhance the coherence, effectiveness and fairness of victims' redress.

Figuring Victims in International Criminal Justice

Figuring Victims in International Criminal Justice
Author: Maria Elander
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429492057

Most discourses on victims in international criminal justice take the subject of victims for granted, as an identity and category existing exogenously to the judicial process. This book takes a different approach. Through a close reading of the institutional practices of one particular court, it demonstrates how court practices produce the subjectivity of the victim, a subjectivity that is profoundly of law and endogenous to the enterprise of international criminal justice. Furthermore, by situating these figurations within the larger aspirations of the court, the book shows how victims have come to constitute and represent the link between international criminal law and the enterprise of transitional justice. The book takes as its primary example the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as it is also called. Focusing on the representation of victims in crimes against humanity, victim participation and photographic images, the book engages with a range of debates and scholarship in law, feminist theory and cultural legal theory. Furthermore, by paying attention to a broader range of institutional practices, Figuring Victims makes an innovative scholarly contribution to the debates on the roles and purposes of international criminal justice.

Reparations for Victims of Armed Conflict

Reparations for Victims of Armed Conflict
Author: Cristián Correa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108480950

Three experts address reparation for victims of armed conflict, drawing on international law practice, human rights courts, and domestic law.

Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court

Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court
Author: T. Markus Funk
Publisher:
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199941467

Since World War II, there have been some 250 conflicts throughout the world, leaving between 70-170 million atrocity crime victims. Unlike diseases or natural disasters, the injuries and tragedies of war are largely self-inflicted. Created in response to such outrages, the International Criminal Court (ICC) stands as the first and only permanent juridical body prosecuting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court introduces readers to the most significant restorative feature of the ICC's procedure: direct victim participation in war crime trials. Under this new model, the ICC has given victims a voice to speak out against their abusers. T. Markus Funk presents the first comprehensive guidance on this innovative dynamic, analyzing not just the procedural rules that apply, but also the practical problems in advocating for victims before the ICC. In the process, Funk provides an overview of ICC trial procedure, a candid assessment of the performance of the ICC and its predecessor tribunals, and a guide to the development of victims' rights under international law. Not only does he identify areas needing reform and reconsideration, but he also provides readers with concrete solutions. Funk, an experienced federal prosecutor and law professor who has advised prosecutors and judges at criminal tribunals as the U.S. Justice Department's Resident Legal Advisor for Kosovo, draws on that experience to suggest ways in which the ICC can improve the lot of victims of the world's worst crimes. This second edition provides a detailed analysis of the newly recognized right of victims to participate in the trials of their accused abusers. The author guides the reader through this unique, controversial body of procedural and substantive rights for victims of atrocity crimes, and discusses how to qualify as Legal Counsel for Victims, and how to seek Reparations. In addition, the author provides updated caselaw and other information to reflect the ICC's current position on victim involvement and related procedure as well as text to show how these changes in the law affect ICC procedure and advocacy.

Indigenous Peoples' Land Rights under International Law

Indigenous Peoples' Land Rights under International Law
Author: Jérémie Gilbert
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2007-03-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9047431308

This book addresses the right of indigenous peoples to live, own and use their traditional territories. A profound relationship with land and territories characterizes indigenous groups, but indigenous peoples have been and are repeatedly deprived of their lands. This book analyzes whether the international legal regime provides indigenous peoples with the collective right to live on their traditional territories. Through its meticulous and wide-ranging examination of the interaction between international law and indigenous peoples’ land rights, the work explores several burning issues such as collective rights, self-determination, autonomy, property rights, and restitution of land. In assessing the human rights approach to land rights the book delves into the notion of past violations and the role of human rights law in providing for remedies, reparation and restitution. It also argues that there is a new phase in the relationship between States and indigenous peoples in the making of territorial agreements. Based on its analysis of indigenous peoples’ land rights under international law, this book proposes an original theory as regards the legal status of indigenous peoples. It explores how indigenous peoples have been the victims of the rules governing title to territory since the inception of international law, and how under the current human rights regime, indigenous peoples have now gained the status of actors of international law. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

Victims' Rights, Human Rights and Criminal Justice

Victims' Rights, Human Rights and Criminal Justice
Author: Jonathan Doak
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1847314244

In recent times, the idea of 'victims' rights' has come to feature prominently in political, criminological and legal discourse, as well as being subject to regular media comment. The concept nevertheless remains inherently elusive, and there is still considerable ambiguity as to the origin and substance of such rights. This monograph deconstructs the nature and scope of the rights of victims of crime against the backdrop of an emerging international consensus on how victims ought to be treated and the role they ought to play. The essence of such rights is ascertained not only by surveying the plethora of international standards which deal specifically with crime victims, but also by considering the potential cross-applicability of standards relating to victims of abuse of power, with whom they have much in common. In this book Jonathan Doak considers the parameters of a number of key rights which international standards suggest victims ought to be entitled to. He then proceeds to ask whether victims are able to rely upon such rights within a domestic criminal justice system characterised by structures, processes and values which are inherently exclusionary, adversarial and punitive in nature.