The Global Sites of Atrocity Crimes Justice: A New Framework

[Mikkel Jarle Christensen is professor WSR in iCourts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Here he is principal investigator for the JustSites project (ERC-StG 802053).]

International criminal justice often operates across borders, mediating different degrees of distance and proximity. Sometimes, cross-border operations are folded directly into its institutions. This is visible, for instance, when international criminal courts deal with conflicts located elsewhere and rely on other stakeholders to find witnesses and build evidence. In other contexts, transnational activity is linked to the flow of professionals, resources, practices and knowledge, for instance as international criminal law experts travel to countries in which conflicts have occurred to consult or collaborate on transitional justice initiatives. In addition to being built around transnational activity that unfolds at different levels, a variety of different institutions and organisations are active in the fight against atrocity crimes – a fight focused on holding individuals criminally accountable for international crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression) and work for the rights of its victims. 

Apart from international criminal courts, a range of other organisations are also involved in this field. Such organisations include, for instance, national war crimes units, diplomatic offices, NGOs, law firms, think tanks, funding agencies, forensic exhumations, academic research centres and specialised media outlets (including blogs). All of these entities cooperate and compete across borders to develop, control and disseminate atrocity crimes justice. For instance, the flows of financial resources from funding bodies are crucial for understanding the activities of NGOs and think tanks. These funding flows sometimes help shape the strategies and developments of human rights work and the level to which it engages with international criminal justice. 

This blog post presents, in short form, a new conceptual framework developed in a recently published 30-page article. The conceptual framework is designed to enable critical and empirically informed studies of these entities, more specifically how their local embeddedness in different settings across the globe as well as their relations to each other structure activity and developments in the field of atrocity crimes justice. The blog post references part of all of the scholarship that the conceptual framework has learned from and builds on and succinctly presents the framework itself in a manner that is accessible to new readers.

The Justice Sites

The conceptual framework is structured around this notion of ‘justice sites’. The concept of justice sites covers the different institutions and organisations listed above without necessarily being restricted to them. By cutting across these entities, the notion of justice sites has several advantages. First of all, it avoids some of the preconceptions that follow from using concepts such as institutions, ideas that often also shape the questions research asks and consequently the knowledge it produces. 

Secondly, the concept highlights that although the justice sites are very different, agents within them work, at least in their own perception, to develop atrocity crimes justice. This engagement in the field is part of what links the justice sites together through patterns of cooperation and competition to develop and define atrocity crimes justice. 

Thirdly, the notion underlines that the justice sites are localised entities and that their locality in some ways shape how they interact with each other and how the relations between them develop over time as they engage with each other in the field of atrocity crimes justice. As such, the concept underlines the need to take both the local embeddedness and the relations of the justice sites seriously as research objects.

The justice sites are defined by the fact that work within them is routinely involved with atrocity crimes justice. Work in one justice site is linked to work carried out in another one, whether it be through efforts to develop jurisprudence, to access to crime sites, secure evidence, organise outreach or secure funds for future activity. This work is also affected by embeddedness of a site of justice in a concrete national and local context. For instance, the international criminal courts often depend on stakeholders close to and familiar with the theatre of crime to secure evidence. These stakeholders are referred to in the context of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as ‘intermediaries’, but are often in fact folded into specific justice sites. 

In some cases intermediaries supplying evidence to the international criminal courts are NGOs that have specific interests in representing victims and in impacting proceedings before the courts. For such NGOs whether or not to divert resources towards securing evidence, as well as decisions related to whether or not to officially engage with the ICC or other courts carries specific strategic implications related to the national and local context into which they are folded. Some NGOs have specialised in collecting, systematising and analysing evidence, for instance CIJA, the Center for International Justice and Accountability, an NGO registered in The Netherlands. The recent case in a German court in Koblenz against Anwar Raslan built on some of the evidence collected by CIJA. 

At a more general level, structured by their local embeddedness, an NGO located close to the theatre of crime faces different challenges and opportunities than a large international NGOs often headquartered elsewhere. To make such differences between justice sites analytically and empirically analysable, the article distinguishes between their internal and external (endogenous and exogenous) dynamics that both relate to their physical presence at a certain locality.

Internal dynamics refer here, most importantly, to the rules that apply to work in different justice sites, as well as to the workforce available in them, its divisions of labour, and level of specialisation and expertise, as well as to the resources they can deploy to affect the field of international criminal justice through impact in other sites. The ability to travel, for instance, and having the funds to allow staff to travel, can be used to have such impact. Such resources can be linked to finances and the extent to which they can be invested elsewhere, but can also cover access to software and hardware. 

External dynamics relate to the resources, networks and knowledge available to the workforces active in specific justice sites based on their locality. This is visible for instance when NGOs active close to theatres of crime are able to help produce evidence or mediate access to witnesses. Other external dynamics can relate to networks, for instance of other justice sites and their accessibility in the local context. Justice sites with offices in The Hague might have specific opportunities that are different from those not based in the self-proclaimed city of peace and justice.

Relations Between Justice Sites

Partly structured by and partly structuring these internal and external dynamics, the sites of justice are also affected by their relations to each other as well as to practice sites situated in other fields. Relations between justice sites engaged in atrocity crimes justice can be identified through cooperation and competition between them, but also has a deeper structural dimension. At the structural level, patterns of financing help format the relations between justice sites, global north sites often being dominant in terms of the funds they can raise and deploy. Patterns of dominance are typically established and play out over time and are visible also in concrete collaborations between justice sites. For instance, whereas the international criminal courts do not always have strong direct effects on the ground, the international interventions that they are part of tend to change the local landscape and the funding opportunities of justice sites close to the former theatre of crime. Outside of the ability to affect other justice sites through the deployment of financial resources, there are other ways of having effects through the circulation of ideas, practices and agents. For instance, large international NGOs have at times built up specific expertise with international criminal justice. This enables them not only to have effects with regards to collaborating with the international criminal courts, with academics or with law firms. It also allows them to lend their expertise to smaller NGOs, often close to conflict zones, and to support work with international criminal justice through such collaborations – that often also increase their own influence. This shows how justice sites with particular patterns of expertise as well as large workforces that can be deployed flexibly and have the ability to be globally mobile can be impact the field of international criminal justice. The ability to have effects is linked to the internal and external dynamics of justice site, but are visible in their relations, specifically how they are able to affect the ideas and practices of other justice sites. These relations structure the field of atrocity crimes justice and give it direction both normatively and in terms of its practical developments. 

Besides having relations to other justice sites in the field fighting atrocity crimes, the justice sites also have relations to other sites. In the terminology of the developed framework, sites not routinely involved with international criminal justice can be conceptualised as ‘practice sites’ (or even as justice sites working with types of justice claims that do not relate to atrocity crimes justice). Such practice sites can be folded into national field as part of their bureaucracy, i.e. ministries, police services or other parts of the state system. The justice sites dealing with atrocity crimes come into contact with such practice sites in many ways. One example occurs when they have to secure permits for their activities either as operating from the particular country itself or coming from the outside. This is visible, for instance, in cases where governments increase documentation demands for NGOs that receive funds from outside of the country in which they operate to work with international criminal justice (as well as human rights more generally). This is the case, for instance, in Uganda where NGOs are at times seen as ‘foreign agents’ and civil society organisations report that government red tape has increased over the past years (see here). Especially for small NGOs with limited budgets and workforce, such demands can significantly stifle their ability to operate effectively. The rules and cooperative patterns of practice sites linked to national bureaucracies also structure the work of the international criminal courts, for academic researchers trying to study international criminal justice and for a range of other justice sites. Outside of such interactions, shaped by power dynamics between justice sites and practice sites in national settings (where they usually favour the latter), relations between justice sites and practice sites play out in numerous ways across national, transnational and international settings. 

These relations can also be used to study the borders of the field of international criminal justice as they become visible through its contacts with other practice sites. In other words, studying the relations between atrocity crimes justice sites and other sites can yield important results about the liminality between different fields as well as how they overlap and contrast in specific sites. These relations are at times active inside of the justice sites themselves. This is the case when they are engaged not only in international criminal justice, but also in other fields, at times different legal domains. Law firms dealing with international crimes, for instance, often have a broader portfolio in which international criminal justice work might play a larger or smaller role depending on the expertise of the firm and the revenue streams different legal domains bring. Similarly, but building on very different divisions of labour, NGOs engaged in international criminal justice are often also engaged in other transitional justice or human rights domains, something visible inside of specific justice sites, specifically in their divisions of labour and the specialised expertise of its professionals. Whereas some professionals might be specialised in international criminal justice others might focus on other legal domains that fall under the umbrella of the justice site. The relations between such professionals at times embedded in different fields – that may also have different opinions about which type of work ought to take priority – shape what happens in justice sites and how they relate to other sites.   

Conclusion

By making the relations between different fields as they play out in and across the justice sites visible, the framework can be used to study how such fields are linked, overlap and conflict in different contexts. This opens important avenues for research that can help situate different forms of justice claims and practices vis-à-vis each other and advance our understanding of how their relations shape developments and activities across them. Making these relations intelligible, the framework can also be used to study sites active in other legal domains such as human or Indigenous rights, just transitions from climate change, or other forms of globalised justice. Justice sites active in these fields are in constant pursuit of specific just ends that aim to reshape our world and the opportunities specific groups of individuals have within it. In a world where such forms of justice are under pressure, a pressure that is increasing in many countries, understanding precisely how justice sites work, are related and develop, what it takes to build a successful site of justice, can yield new knowledge of importance in academia as well as among legal practitioners and politicians.