| Popis: |
This thesis examines how the promise and institutionalization of 'justice for victims' has shaped the ICC's justice vision and identity. Drawing on interviews with 90 practitioners in The Hague, Kenya and Uganda, it undertakes a sociological and institutional analysis of how 'justice for victims' has evolved in the Court's first two decades through the definitions and redefinitions, pushes and pulls, strategies and miscalculations of the Court's diverse actors both in The Hague and in the field. It argues that the introduction of 'justice for victims' has led to a rift within the Court between those who embrace a narrow understanding of justice as 'fair trials' and those who see the ICC as an opening for broader justice processes. These rifts and gaps are reinforced by the Court's actors in the field such as victims' lawyers and intermediaries who sometimes assume political advocacy roles beyond what the Court's judges envisaged or follow their parochial interests on the ground. While the ICC's judges have increasingly curtailed victim participation and reparation in the court room, the Court's practices on the ground reflect an uneasy fusion of legal justice, development, local and national politics with a proliferation of new justice concepts including 'transformative justice' and 'gender justice'. So far, these justice contestations have not chipped away, much less undermined, the Court's legitimacy. Rather, the Court has thrived on its justice contradictions; its failure to commit to any particular justice vision while loosely relating to all possible visions, has made the Court impervious to critique. But the thesis will also show that 'justice for victims' at the ICC is schizophrenic: it is inherently unstable and its contradictory dynamics may at some point rip the concept apart - and with it the Court's legitimacy. |
