The Fight Against Impunity in EU Law


Book Description

The fight against impunity is an increasingly central concept in EU law-making and adjudication. What is the meaning and the scope of impunity as a legal concept in the EU legal order? How does the fight against impunity influence policy and adjudication? This timely first piece of comprehensive research aims to to address these largely unexplored questions, which involve structural institutional and substantive dilemmas underpinning the most recent developments of the European integration process. In recent years, the fight against impunity has become a pressing concern for the European institutions. It has shaped several EU policies and has led to a recurring argument in the case law of the Court of Justice. The book sheds light on this elusive notion, providing a much needed conceptual appraisal. The first section examines the scope of the notion of impunity, and its role in the EU decision-making process and in the development of EU competences. Subsequent sections discuss the implications of impunity - and of the fight against it - in a variety of complementary domains, namely the allocation of criminal jurisdiction, mutual recognition instruments, the rise of new surveillance technologies and the external dimension of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. This book is an original and timely contribution to scholarship, which is of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers alike.




Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda


Book Description

This volume presents and critiques the distorted effects of the international human rights movement's focus on the fight against impunity.




The United Nations Principles to Combat Impunity


Book Description

Bringing together leading experts in the field, this volume provides comprehensive academic commentary on the UN Principles to Combat Impunity. The book features the text of each of the 38 Principles, along with a full analysis, detailed commentary, and a guide to relevant literature and case law.




The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law


Book Description

In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. Some of the contributions to the Handbook come from scholars within the field, but many come from outside of international criminal law, or indeed from outside law itself. The chapters are grounded in history, geography, philosophy, and international relations. The result is a Handbook that expands the discipline and should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.




Twilight of Impunity


Book Description

An eyewitness account of the first major international war-crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg trials, Twilight of Impunity is a gripping guide to the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The historic trial of the “Butcher of the Balkans” began in 2002 and ended abruptly with Milosevic’s death in 2006. Judith Armatta, a lawyer who spent three years in the former Yugoslavia during Milosevic’s reign, had a front-row seat at the trial. In Twilight of Impunity she brings the dramatic proceedings to life, explains complex legal issues, and assesses the trial’s implications for victims of the conflicts in the Balkans during the 1990s and international justice more broadly. Armatta acknowledges the trial’s flaws, particularly Milosevic’s grandstanding and attacks on the institutional legitimacy of the International Criminal Tribunal. Yet she argues that the trial provided an indispensable legal and historical narrative of events in the former Yugoslavia and a valuable forum where victims could tell their stories and seek justice. It addressed crucial legal issues, such as the responsibility of commanders for crimes committed by subordinates, and helped to create a framework for conceptualizing and organizing other large-scale international criminal tribunals. The prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague was an important step toward ending impunity for leaders who perpetrate egregious crimes against humanity.




Justifying Genocide


Book Description

The Armenian Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are often thought to be separated by a large distance in time and space. But Stefan Ihrig shows that they were much more connected than previously thought. Bismarck and then Wilhelm II staked their foreign policy on close relations with a stable Ottoman Empire. To the extent that the Armenians were restless under Ottoman rule, they were a problem for Germany too. From the 1890s onward Germany became accustomed to excusing violence against Armenians, even accepting it as a foreign policy necessity. For many Germans, the Armenians represented an explicitly racial problem and despite the Armenians’ Christianity, Germans portrayed them as the “Jews of the Orient.” As Stefan Ihrig reveals in this first comprehensive study of the subject, many Germans before World War I sympathized with the Ottomans’ longstanding repression of the Armenians and would go on to defend vigorously the Turks’ wartime program of extermination. After the war, in what Ihrig terms the “great genocide debate,” German nationalists first denied and then justified genocide in sweeping terms. The Nazis too came to see genocide as justifiable: in their version of history, the Armenian Genocide had made possible the astonishing rise of the New Turkey. Ihrig is careful to note that this connection does not imply the Armenian Genocide somehow caused the Holocaust, nor does it make Germans any less culpable. But no history of the twentieth century should ignore the deep, direct, and disturbing connections between these two crimes.




"Everyone Lives in Fear"


Book Description

Key recommendations - A note on methodology. -- Background: People, the India-Pakistan dispute, political history, recent developments, and peace talks. - The people of Jammu and Kashmir - India-Pakistan dispute - Political history inside Jammu and Kashmir. -- Legal causes of abuses and impunity. Preventing arrest: Section 45 of the Criminal Procedure Code - Preventing prosecution: Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code - The Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act and Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act -- The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 -- Legal weaknesses in the Human Rights Protection Act -- Weaknesses in military court jurisdiction. -- The origins of impunity: failure of accountability in Jammu and Kashmir since the start of the conflict. A. Shootings at Gawakadal, Srinagar - B. Death of Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq - C. The Beijbehara killings - D. The killing of Jalil Andrabi - E. Chattisinghpora massacre and ensuing killings. -- Recent abuses and continuing impunity. A. Killings - B. "Disappearances"--C. Torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment - D. Arbitrary detentions. -- Militant abuses. Militant goups and Pakistan's role in the conflict. - A. Politically motivated killings, summary executions, and intimidation - B. Direct and indiscriminate attacks on civilians - Militant attacks on schools and recruitment of children. -- Recommendations. To the government of India - To the state government of Jammu and Kashmir - To militant groups - To the government of Pakistan - To the United Nations - To the international community, in particular those states with significant influence on India, Pakistan, and militant groups. -- Acknowledgements.




The History of the Armenian Genocide


Book Description

Dadrian, a former professor at SUNY, Geneseo, currently directs a genocide study project supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. The present study analyzes the devastating wartime destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as the cataclysmic culmination of a historical process involving the progressive Turkish decimation of the Armenians through intermittent and incremental massacres. In addition to the excellent general bibliography there is an annotated bibliography of selected books used in the study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Law’s Impunity


Book Description

When faced with those who act with impunity, we seek the protection of law. We rely upon the legal system for justice, from international human rights law that establishes common standards of protection, to international criminal law that spearheads efforts to end impunity for the most heinous atrocities. While legal processes are perceived to combat impunity, and despite the ready availability of the law, accountability often remains elusive. What if the law itself enables impunity? Law's Impunity asks this question in the context of the modern Private Military Company (PMC), examining the relationship between law and the concepts of responsibility and impunity. This book proposes that ordinary legal processes do not neutralise, but rather legalise impunity. This radical idea is applied to the abysmal record of human rights violations perpetrated by the modern PMC and the shocking absence of accountability. This book demonstrates how the law organises, rather than overcomes, impunity by detailing how the modern PMC exploits ordinary legal processes to systematically exclude itself from legal responsibility. Thus, Law's Impunity offers an alternative to conventional thinking about the law, providing an innovative approach to assess and refine the rigour of legal processes in the ongoing quest to end impunity.




In Plain Sight


Book Description

Following a 1932 coup d’état in Thailand that ended absolute monarchy and established a constitution, the Thai state that emerged has suppressed political dissent through detention, torture, forced reeducation, disappearances, assassinations, and massacres. In Plain Sight shows how these abuses, both hidden and occurring in public view, have become institutionalized through a chronic failure to hold perpetrators accountable. Tyrell Haberkorn’s deeply researched revisionist history of modern Thailand highlights the legal, political, and social mechanisms that have produced such impunity and documents continual and courageous challenges to state domination.