pros and cons of war crime tribunals pros and cons of war crime tribunals

2002] CASE W. RES. 1 Cited by Andres Clapham in From Nuremberg to The Hague: The Future of International Criminal Justice, Philippe Sands, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 31. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law. War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Superior orders would be no excuse but could be considered in mitigation. The Landlord and Tenant Board is beneficial because it is cheaper and faster compared to the traditional court system. Please, be respectful of others' point of view and stick to the facts. At the time that the Potsdam Declaration was signed, the war in Europe had ended but the war with Japan was . Milosevic was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. So-called 'laws of war' such as the Geneva Conventions fall under this category. This new momentum reflected widespread agreement that an international criminal court, with fair trial for the accused, should be created as an essential component of a just world order under law. First, they focus on the past. The USSR, France, United States, and Britain agreed that the having a trial was the best to deal with the war criminals of the European Axis powers (The Gale Group, par 1). The final London Agreement created the system on which the surviving Nazi leaders and Nazi criminal organizations would be tried. Count four consisted of Crimes Against Humanity, which was a new idea, dealing with inhuman actions committed against civilians. And the stories that come out of Africa are that the recruitment of child soldiers and the use of them now is viewed as being a sure ticket to the Hague, and that as a result the behavior is changing - and that's all for the good. In May 1993, the U.N. Security Council formally established the ICTY (Res. The Geneva Convention as drafted in 1949 evolved from 19th century protocols (1864). Kuwait wants him tried for invading that country in 1991. According to some estimates, nearly 170 million civilians have been subjected to genocide, war crimes and Crimes Against Humanity during the past century. One is that the court does not target persons. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: 1. Tribunals are special courts of experts in different walks of life. One of the major advantages of Tribunals over normal court system is that; persons in charge of the system are usually experts. The result is that in almost every case in history, the dictator/president/head of state/military/leader responsible for carrying out these atrocities despite in Nuremberg has escaped punishment, justice and even censure. In 1992, the Security Council established a Commission of Experts to investigate evidence of violations of humanitarian law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The criminal courts deal with business and professions and the government. Eventually, translations are made by the court, however, this often happens after local media has already grabbed the story. Crime Against Peace/Crimes of Aggression - Acts based on the distinction between offensive and defensive warfare. In addition, an issue that compounds this war of ideas is that too often international criminal court proceedings are not translated into the local languages. From lodging an ET1 claim submission to going to an employment tribunal will take months . This can be necessary to countries in defensive their territories and protective their voters. The ICTYs first indictment was handed down in November 1994. Article 6. However, on the theoretical arena the Convention Against Genocide is a development from the precepts set in Nuremberg, in such a sudden and ad hoc manner, especially where codification of Crimes Against Humanity is concerned. "International War Crimes Tribunals" provides a comparison between a war crime tribunal and a basic tribunal. The basic premise of the principles is that no accused war criminal in any place or time is above the law. The idea of a Crime of War, or war crime, is not new to the modern legal vocabulary. What are war crimes? In the case of the ICTY, perceptions are. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic appears before the court of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in December 2001. This trial began on November 20, 1945. There's certainly lots of anecdotal evidence - that people are adjusting their behavior, and that attitudes to certain things, like the recruitment of child soldiers, have changed quite dramatically. Historically, for activities to be considered international crimes they had to violate domestic regulations. Questions also remain as to whether the trial and sentencing of Hussein will conform with international human rights standards and whether it will served the ends of justice and reconciliation in Iraq. The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law. Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the current Mid-East conflicts. Principle VI U.N. International Law Commission unveils the seven Nuremberg Principles. But largely, I think Mr Abdallah's right: it's the challenge of trying to be a global court, rather than one that is targeted at a specific situation. 1. So, are international criminal courts good or bad? An advance in international law with human rights as its core motivation is positive progress. Thus, the Germans could not use the unfairness of the Versailles Treaty to justify making war to bring about is revision. Any judge in the U.S. court will continue arguing that it is not an act of war, it is a federal crime as . 8. The goal of these trials was to punish and convict major war criminals fairly, in hopes of avoiding future wars. A second point of disagreement between the Americans and the Russians was whether organizations, such as the SS and the Gestapo, could be tried as criminal entities. (11), Under General assembly Resolution 177 (II), paragraph (a), the International Law Commission was directed to formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal. Since the Nuremberg Principles had been affirmed by the General Assembly, the task entrusted to the Commission was not to express any appreciation of these principles as principles of international law but merely to formulate them. 3 Malekian, Farhad, International Criminal Law The Legal and Critical Analysis of International Crimes, 1991, p. 1,2, and 9. Four years later, and obviously pleased with the ILCs report, the General Assembly called on the Commission to commence the process of drafting a statute for the court. 9. The first point of contention was over the function of the indictment. As discussed above, international criminal courts can bring in expert legal councils for areas that lack strong judicial institutions. The third count was war crimes a category that included killing and mistreating soldiers and civilians in ways not justified by military necessity. Schabas: There is; I mean, it's difficult to prove. Professionals agreed upon the icc's greatest . Serbs initiate a policy of ethnic cleansing, or forcibly removing people from their homes in an effort to create ethnically pure regions, and detain many non-Serbs in concentration camps. Essay about The Pros and Cons of the Tribunal System, Advantages and Disadvantages of the Tribunal System. So I think that's why he's not in obvious places where I think he has the possibility of operating, like in Afghanistan, or in Gaza, or in Colombia. United Nations forces were dispatched to Rwanda to help restore order to that battered country. 5.1 Influence on the Development of International Criminal Law Photo: AFP Past cases at the ICC and U.N. war crimes tribunals suggest that - despite the mounting civilian casualties - Khan's team faces a long and difficult process to prove violations of international . The Nuremberg Tribunals were a precedent and a promise. The regulation of the state of war, whether stemming from tradition, custom, certain codes of conduct and, ultimately, law, has evolved throughout the centuries together with the notion of war. What was glaringly absent was U.N.-authorized action to bring to justice those who were responsible for the aggression, the Crimes Against Humanity and the clear violations of the laws of war that accompanied Iraqs unlawful invasions of Kuwait. 2 White, Jamison G., Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide: Augusto Pinochet, Universal Jurisdiction, the ICC,and a Wake-up Call for the Former Heads of State, 1999 and Scharf, Michael P., Results of the Rome Conference for an International Court, 1998. Indeed if international criminal law is defined as the prosecution of individuals for international crimes such as war crimes or Crimes Against Humanity then there was no such law for most of the twentieth century. The Federal Court must show they have extreme and substantial evidence in the outcome of the case. As of September 1997, a total of 78 individuals have been publicly indicted by the Court. War step-up makes folks and corporations nervous enough that they sit down and stop payment. A war crimes trial is the trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law committed during armed conflict. The time limits are very strict. 6. 935, July 1994) and it soon reported back that the crimes being committed were horrendous. Trials began in June 2004. Innocent folks are fixed within the scenario and lose their lives within the method. These include genocide, torture, and. [House Hearing, 113 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] ESTABLISHING A SYRIAN WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL In the LAW01 exam, you won't need to write an evaluation. All advantages and disadvantages that you need to know about tribunals for the LAW01 exam should you choose to answer questions on civil courts and ADR. When first presented with the question whether criminal justice is a system, non-system, and network I leaned toward a network. Twenty-four people and seven organizations were charged with the equivalent of genocide. The warrants and requests raised a number of difficult . Today there is a criminal court operating under a United Nations mandate for most cases of mass atrocity around the globe. Conventions have arisen after the appearance of this idea, as well as resolutions and other relevant legislation emanating from international bodies and organisms (mainly the UN). War and law have had a constant relationship between each other ever since the existence of conflict as a collective phenomenon. 827). The importance of these tribunals comes in its direct definition of crimes against humanity and war crimes, and the initial recognition for the need of a global criminal system. The execution of the trials lacked proper conduct and whether or not the trials were legal was debatable. Nikitchenko and Professor Trainin made up the Russian delegation. That's because it is a treaty-based court. Selective Reaction to Atrocity War Crimes and the Development of International Criminal Law. Casualties: The flipside of War is that the range of lives lost. Roberts argues that while the laws of war provide a set of internationally approved military standards, the laws should not be viewed as a 'system of international criminal justice.' Article 1. 3. The federal system and almost all states (Oregon and Louisiana excepted) require unanimous verdicts for criminal trials. Local society can oftentimes perceive international criminal courts to be a form of neo-colonialism that imposes Western-led control, packaged into an international law aid context. These two tribunals laid the groundwork for the prosecution and convictions of soldiers and commanders that committed crimes in World War II. Other defendants were hanged or sentenced to long prison terms. View of the Nuremberg court taken in 1946, during the war crimes trial of Nazi leaders during after World War II. To go out and get more members - they're going to join, not just because they're convinced of the independence and impartiality of the court, but because they feel that the court is courageous in terms of addressing the conflicts that are important to them, like the situation in Palestine. 7. It certainly has great accomplishments as it marks its ten years of operation. The ultimate reason for these provisions to arise, in theoretical terms and laying aside political considerations, has been the protection of the human being as an individual, regardless of geographical, political or social factors and circumstances, and hence has become a Human Right, so to say, in its own right. 1995 This convention criminalized genocide and related activities in the international sphere, and the convention itself is heavily influenced by many of the Nuremberg principles. 1998 Specialized courts also run the risk of encouraging special interest groups to take an undue . Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. Accordingly to several academics, Article 6 C of the Charter drafted in the London Agreement was in a way formulated exclusively with the thought of prosecuting the Nazi leaders held responsible for the atrocities committed against the Jewish people and other targeted groups both inside and outside Germany. These are in place to allow a trial to proceed more efficiently and fairly for both the defense and prosecution. Alberta Law Review 60. It must be stressed that international criminal court achievements should not be understated. On June 21 representatives from the United States and Britain met on an informal basis to exchange information. Opinions of the local populations on ICTY judgements depend on whether their group was the victim or the perpetrator. Professor Schabas, how effective do you think the court has been? The courts are there to put the right sentencing to punish the criminal and assign probation and fines, jail, or prison time that suites the crime. Nrnberg trials, Nrnberg also spelled Nuremberg, series of trials held in Nrnberg, Germany, in 1945-46, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. It is only since the development of a doctrine of human rights, of fundamental, documented universal principles, that such crimes have materialized into a legal cast due to the development of the notion of Crimes Against Humanity and its derived breaches. Third, the location of the courts being outside the conflict zone has been praised and criticised. The first count involved conspiracy conspiring to engage in the other three counts. Fadi El Abdallah: Basically, I think that there is a need to put things in their context. The ICTY has also begun to take on cases from the Kosovo crisis of the late 1990s.The highest-profile figure indicted by the Tribunal was former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. The U.N., which was founded in 1945 from the ashes of World War II, took the lead in the late 1940s in defining war crimes and trying to establish guidelines designed to prevent such horrors in the future. This additionally decreases foreign direct investment. environment. With a substantially increased risk of further terrorist attacks in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks and the Bali bombings, the development of appropriate legislative and institutional responses to international crimes has acquired a new urgency. The other thing that we need also to take into consideration is that the ICC is not working on one specific situation. In 1948 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution reciting that [i]n the course of development of the international community, there will be a an increasing need of an international judicial organ for the trial of certain crimes under international law. (13) Initiatives to create such an institution were taken as early as 1937 by the League of Nations that formulated a convention for the establishment of an international criminal court, but the Cold War led to deadlock in the international community and the matter fell into oblivion. 5.1.2 The Geneva Conventions 5.2.1 Tokyo In response the Security Council, basing its decisions on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, commissioned two ad hoc international criminal tribunals (the ICTY for the former Yugoslavia and the ICTR for Rwanda) to investigate alleged violations and to bring the perpetrators to justice. Used by permission. . The domestic crime rate in any country is directly in proportion to the efficiency of policing and the system of criminal justice. These procedures give a standard format for trials that must be followed to ensure that all parties have an equal opportunity to present their. It led to the speedy creation of a similar ad hoc tribunal to deal with genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in Rwanda. When conflict arose in the former territories of Yugoslavia in the 1990s it was clear that the current judicial structure would not be powerful enough nor impartial enough to fairly prosecute the mass atrocity. This interview was conducted by DW's Charlotte Collins. war and, therefore, the threat of violence are the essential building blocks for peace and stability. 8 Jackson, Robert H. Statement of Chief Counsel Upon Signing of the Agreement, 19 Temp, I.Q 169 [1945-6], 9 cite R.H. Jackson, The Case Against the Nazi War Criminals (NY, Knopf, 1946, pp 3-7). The end of tight Communist control in Eastern Europe also unleashed long-suppressed nationalism among ethnic groups. THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNALS The process of creating this charter had taken two months of negotiation but succeeded in establishing a system that all four nations would accept as the dispensing justice. This is a UN tribunal, with an international panel of judges picked from a list submitted by the Security Council and then elected by the UN General Assembly. They were the first tribunals where violators of international law were held responsible for their crimes. Normally you have only up to 3 months to make a claim, 89 days more specifically. II, pp 374-378. 13 United Nations Doc. That is because the military is one of the few jurisdictions that allows for split verdicts in criminal trials. Stimulates economic growth: War creates job opportunities, particularly in weapons-producing industries. Indicted in 1999, he was brought to The Hague to stand trial in 2001. Secondly, the question of determination of law applicable to the merits of the dispute will be brought up including the case when the intention of the parties can be found and the situation when there is absence of the choice of law made by the parties. Lay members sit with the tribunal judge to hear the case and they are experts in the type of case being heard which gives them good knowledge and understanding of the issue in dispute. J. INT'L L. . When the international criminal tribunals were convened in Nuremberg and Tokyo in the mid-1940s, the response from lawyers was mixed. War Crimes Tribunals in IP national laws. The ICTY has to determine individual criminal responsibility in trials for crimes under the ICTY Statute. In the early 1990s, the Cold War had ended, and most formerly Communist nations were beginning the difficult transition to democracy and capitalism. Iraqi council members have assured their citizens they will televise the trial, so that everyone can see Saddam getting his day in court and understand the depth and breadth of the atrocities he and his regime committed. When crimes of lesser magnitude are committed within a national state, good governments use their criminal justice system to hunt down and punish the perpetrators. McKinley, James C. Jr, 1997. The court is created in order to protect the victims of the most serious and hideous crimes. On first glance, it seems that groups like the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) solve a key limitation facing other justice mechanisms: On the ground and in active.