Truth Beyond the ICC

July 10, 2017 by
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here.  As the Ongwen trial has made clear, the significance that international criminal trials have for the production of truth resides not only in the narratives forged within the courtroom but also in the impact trials have on the political discourses and practices around the trial. In the Uganda Continue reading →

The ICC, Dominic Ongwen, and the Politics of Truth

July 7, 2017 by
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here. The trial of former Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court has thrown into relief the difficulties of seeking truth through international criminal trials. The ICC prosecution has constructed a series of narratives in order to establish the legitimacy of Ongwen’s trial, narratives that Continue reading →

International Criminal Tribunals as Epistemic Engines Or Why Legal Truth Is Not Sui Generis

July 6, 2017 by
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here. Introduction[1] International criminal tribunals (ICTs) are epistemic engines. That is, they are institutions that systematically produce knowledge or find truths. And they do so not only in the way usually recognised in doctrinal scholarly works on international criminal law, i.e. in the sense emphasized, e.g., by the ICTR Continue reading →

Archives of Knowledge: Power, Ownership and Contestation at the ICTR’s Archive

July 5, 2017 by
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here. Archives are sites of power, contestation, and control. The very term archive derives from the ancient Greek word arkeion, which referred to the magistrates (archons) house where official records were kept and protected. The magistrate drew their power through protecting, controlling and interpreting these records in order to Continue reading →

Sentencing at the ICTY: Doing justice to complex realities of international crimes?

July 4, 2017 by
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here. International crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are manifestations of large-scale serious violations of human rights, which have been defined as the most serious crimes of international concern. They constitute a prime example of collective, systematic criminality. Usually, they are committed by a multiplicity Continue reading →

Symposium: Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals

July 3, 2017 by and
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This post is part of a symposium, Doing Justice to Truth in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals. All currently available contributions to the symposium can be found here. A PDF of this post can be downloaded here. As the field of international criminal justice has institutionalized over the course of the past 70 years, communities—both local and international—have increasingly turned to international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTs) to serve as arbiters of truth in the aftermath of mass atrocities. In turn, ICTs have acted as Continue reading →

Is a global history of development possible?

June 5, 2017 by
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This post first appeared at Small Precautions.   What would a fully integrated “global” history of development entail? It would require Considering all actors in the development process: from the subaltern “objects” of development at one end of the spectrum, to various NGOs and IFIs and transnational corporations in the middle layers, to state elites in the North at the other end – recognizing the politically negotiated nature of each project Looking across all geographies in which development has been deployed: including not just the Continue reading →

The Athenians No Longer Know the Megarians

May 2, 2017 by
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This post originally appeared on Al-Jumhuriya. Deluge © Imranovi The following is a talk given by Kelly Grotke for Stanford University’s conference on the subject of ‘Cruelty’, in which the prominent academic examines friendship, universality, and cruelty between the European past and the Syrian present. States of Friendship Friendship, for Cicero, was a virtuous thing, sustained by love, respect, and sincerity – this is why “one does not live with a friend as one would with a dictator.”[2] Similarly, for Etienne la Boétie: “…a tyrant never either Continue reading →

Beyond Good Intentions: Responsible and Effective Advocacy in the Digital Age

April 3, 2017 by
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This review essay will appear in Humanity volume 9, issue 1. Advocacy in Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Transnational Activism Alex de Waal, editor Zed Books, 2015 Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data Is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response Patrick Meier CRS Press, 2015 Dangerous Trade: Arms Exports, Human Rights, and International Reputation Jennifer Erickson Columbia University Press, 2015 On January 12, 2010, a devastating earthquake shook Haiti, leading to the collapse of much of its infrastructure, burying hundreds of thousands beneath the rubble. At a Continue reading →

Gunnar Myrdal in the Latest Issue of Humanity

March 30, 2017 by
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This post originally appeared at HistPhil, where Maribel Morey is co-editor. She discusses the Gunnar Myrdal symposium featured in Humanity’s latest issue. Americans generally remember Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) as the astute Swedish observer of American race relations who authored the monumental study of black Americans that had been commissioned and funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Cataloguing the various ways that white Americans discriminated against black Americans, Myrdal argued in the two-volume manuscript that Continue reading →