The commission of large-scale international crimes (namely, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide) could result in populations fleeing from their homes, seeking protection. There is an increasing number of victims of these crimes who have been forcibly displaced and currently live in settlements widely known as refugee camps. Victims of international crimes have the right to receive reparations for the harm they have suffered. This means that international criminal tribunals, particularly the International Criminal Court, will have to consider reparations for victims in refugee camps in the near future when the victims seek to enforce their right to reparations. To date, the delivery of reparations in these contexts has not been analysed adequately in the academic literature; this is the gap that this article aims to discuss. The article explores the extent to which it is suitable and feasible to deliver reparations in refugee camps. One of the main arguments is that living in a refugee camp could compound the crime-related harm already sustained by victims. This feature, along with the instability of the situation of victims and the infrastructure of the camp, constitute key characteristics of refugee camps and should each be taken into consideration in delivering reparations. As this article suggests, the instability of the victims’ situation will inform which modalities of reparations are suitable to be delivered in the context of a refugee camp. Subsequently, the compounded harm and the camp's infrastructure will inform which particular reparative measures, corresponding to each modality, will be suitable and feasible – respectively – to be delivered. The methodology includes desk-based and qualitative research and analysis of primary and secondary sources and case studies.

The article examines how to address the report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, which accuses the Government of South Sudan and the rebels of committing “crimes against humanity” and violating “international humanitarian law” in the war of December 2013. The Commission recommends “an Africa-led, Africa-owned, Africa-resourced legal mechanism, under the aegis of the African Union and with support from the United Nations, to bring those with the greatest responsibility at the highest level to accountability” in a court. Second, the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan asked for establishing a hybrid court in South Sudan to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”. The Cabinet of South Sudan approved, in its resolution on 29 January 2021, the establishment of the court. On the other hand, the Government of South Sudan rejected accountability for the perpetrators of international crimes in its resolution at the Transition Justice Conference and recommended “amnesty” for those admitting the commission of international crimes in Juba, Malakal, Bor and Bentiu. The research findings show that amnesty threatens peace and security because customary law rejects amnesty. Its implementation generates systematic vengeance from the clan of those killed. The research recommends the establishment of a hybrid court that adopts the complementarity principle in compatibility with the African customary law of blood compensation. The authoritative national criminal courts in South Sudan omit capital punishment on the grounds that (a) killer(s) pay(s) blood compensation, apok or cot, to the survivors of (a) killed person(s) with 51 cattle. The payment changes the penalties of life imprisonment, which international criminal law imposes on the perpetrators of international crimes and the death penalty, which African criminal law imposes on the confirmed killer(s). Finally, the tribunal imposes 10-year terms of imprisonment on the confirmed perpetrators of international crimes.

In the debate on the (de-)judicialisation of international affairs and the International Criminal Court (ICC) specifically, the distinctions between legality and politics and between state sovereignty and the international remain contested. While realist and legalist approaches discuss the transformation of international politics by international criminal law, sociological and critical-legal perspectives instead highlight the politics of international criminal law. In this contribution, we focus on how the distinctions between (international) law and politics matter, not as substantively opposed spheres, but as boundaries that the ICC itself contingently and flexibly draws when considering particular situations. These meta-politics of invoking and reproducing key boundaries in seemingly technical elaborations of the interest of justice, the scope of its jurisdiction, or the application of complementarity reflect the Court’s particular authority but also its predicament of pushing for an international criminal law serving humanity, rather than states, while reproducing the distinctions between (international) law and politics. We illustrate the Court’s meta-politics by revisiting three recent decisions of the ICC to (not) investigate alleged international crimes committed by British forces in Iraq, by the Taliban, governmental, and US forces in Afghanistan, and by Israeli authorities and Palestinian groups in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

It is increasingly clear that autonomous agents can commit international crimes such as torture and genocide. This article aims to construct ‘electronic liability’ for such international crimes. It will argue that it is not sufficient to hold the persons or programmers behind the autonomous agents liable, but that it should be possible to hold the autonomous agents that commit international crimes liable. It will examine ways in which legal personality can be attributed to machines and argue that if there is a continuum of potential subjects of ICL, then the argument for electronic personhood and liability of machines is as compelling as for other non-humans such as corporate entities and animals. It will be argued that the ICC will potentially only be able to meaningfully prosecute international crimes committed by autonomous agents if it is willing to accommodate strict liability and other faultless models of liability that have so far been anathema to international criminal justice.

The current paper examines the aetiology of persecution committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar from a criminological perspective. Criminological theories focusing on one level of analysis may not fully explain the incidents concerning the systematic implementation of policies of persecution against the Rohingya for decades. Thus, the author scrutinizes the factors which are involved in the aetiology of persecution at three different levels: macro (national), meso (organizational) and micro (local community and individual) within four dynamics – namely, motivation, opportunity, control and constraint. This paper employs the case study method and collects data through focus group discussions with the Rohingya in the Kutupalong refugee camp in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh. It limits its analysis to the data that covers the events of persecution against the Rohingya in Myanmar, such as revocation of their citizenship, deprivation of their fundamental rights, and different forms of atrocity crimes, from 1962 to 2019. It reveals that, despite the heterogeneity of the actions that led to atrocity crimes against the Rohingya, the military leaders in charge of Myanmar (and somewhat Myanmar’s civilian government), military personnel and other security force members, paramilitaries and vigilantes played various roles in the perpetration of such crimes.

This article examines international criminalization, the process by which particular acts come to be established as international crimes in world politics. While international legal scholars suggest international criminalization constitutes a legal process that centres on international legal codification, this article argues, by drawing upon the insights of constructivist International Relations scholarship, that it is better conceived as a social process. More specifically, the process of international criminalization involves the development of an international social consensus on international criminality, which takes hold in international society following diplomatic negotiations between social actors. Furthermore, international criminalization embraces a two-stage process that requires, firstly, the emergence of an international criminal norm and secondly, the translation of that norm into an international legal proscription. Using these conceptual insights, the article analyses, through a close analysis of international archival documents, the historical emergence of genocide, in order to demonstrate how its proposed conceptualization of international criminalization can better explain how and why this act was specifically established as an international crime. In doing so, the article offers an alternative account of genocide's criminalization which, unlike the existing literature, goes some way towards uncovering the processes of social construction that informed its establishment as an international crime.

Should Germany be prosecuting crimes committed in Syria pursuant to universal jurisdiction (UJ)? This article revisits the normative questions raised by UJ—the principle that a state can prosecute serious international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by foreigners outside of its territories—against the backdrop of increasing European UJ proceedings regarding Syrian conflict–related crimes, focusing on Germany as an illustrative example. While existing literature justifies UJ on the basis of universal prohibition of certain atrocities, this creates residual normative issues. Alternatively, this article applies the “two-tiered test” derived from the “dual foundation” thesis of the Eichmann judgment, in which the normative appropriateness of UJ is evaluated against both accounts of universal prohibition and the specific politics surrounding the prosecution. It contends that the large number of Syrian refugees in Germany means that Germany, in particular, should initiate Syrian conflict–related UJ proceedings to prevent continued harm and recognize the political agency of refugees. Ultimately, the article suggests UJ should normatively be thought of as a domestic, rather than international, political event.

This Article is based on the professional experiences of the authors working as lawyers and activists towards accountability for sexualized and gender-based crimes under international law. It provides a critical evaluation of universal jurisdiction cases in Germany addressing conflict-related sexualized violence. In particular, the article looks deeper into the Office of the German Federal Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice’s (GBA) approach to gender while taking note of the barriers in the way of investigating and adjudicating crimes under international law. Both authors have been following universal jurisdiction developments in Germany closely, particularly in relation to the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes. With regard to the proceedings against two high-rank representatives of the armed rebel group Forces Démocratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), the findings in this article are informed by trial monitoring reports organized and conducted by a group of organisations and institutions, namely Medica Mondiale, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung. In light of the fact that German trial records are absent of publicly accessible records of what was said in the court room, the consortium of groups co-monitored the FLDR trial.

Compared to universal jurisdiction, active nationality jurisdiction remains one of the least understood and written about forms of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. This article seeks to offer a normative account of the exercise of criminal jurisdiction by states over their nationals for crimes committed abroad such as sexual offences against minors, bribery of foreign public officials, or medical “circumvention” tourism. It highlights all of the reasons that militate against such assertions of jurisdiction as a matter of policy and law. It goes on to argue that the assertion of criminal jurisdiction over nationals for crimes committed abroad must be understood beyond its permissibility under international law as a modality that manifests the interests of the state of nationality, the territorial (host) state on occasion, the relevant individuals, and, increasingly, the international community.

Economic and armed non-state actors increasingly operate through their transnational activities. International public law excludes them from any international regulation or accountability process. International humanitarian law (IHL, the law of war) as a branch of international public law is an exception to this because it also regulates the behavior of non-state actors. Recent developments pertaining to the potential liability of business entities for involvement in international crimes, particularly when related to the activities of ANSGs challenge the traditional doctrine of international law and demonstrate the need for its norms to adapt to an evolving reality.