After 22 years of uninterrupted authoritarian government headed by Yahya Jammeh, The Gambia formally began a transition to democracy after the December 2016 elections. Given the inadequate development of local legal tradition and lack of resources to fully equip the judiciary, The Gambia has a history of having foreign judges on the bench. This chapter provides insights from The Gambia’s distinctive experience in using foreign judges in the contexts of decolonisation, an authoritarian regime, and transition to democracy. The Gambian context raises important questions about the role of foreign judges in a new democracy emerging from colonial and authoritarian rule. Accordingly, through a historical and contemporary critical review, the chapter provides an overview of the rationale for the use of foreign judges and its impact on judicial independence and the rule of law.

The introuduction lays out the book’s main concerns, core arguments, historical, theoretical and theatrical scope, and interdisicplinary and materialist approach. It argues that the theatres analysed in the rest of the book, when taken together, deliniate a theatre that is increasingly taking up the mantle of the mixed economy: to combine economic efficiency with social security, while promoting liberal democracy. This has occured during a period when the mixed economy has been in electoral and ideological decline. This introduction also argues that the theatres examined in subsequent chapters play three key roles within their market economies: as enactments of the real economy in economic contexts that have become increasingly dominaed by finance capital and rent-seeking; as spatial fixes to productivity problems arising both within theatre and in the wider political economy; and as localisation machines, as apparatuses that render otherwise intangible of remote political and economic relations concrete and proximate.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established under Cambodian law in 2004, but also operates pursuant to an agreement with the UN. The ECCC has convicted defendants for charges including genocide, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. This may appear to indicate that Cambodia’s leaders have accepted the norm of international criminal justice, at least for historic crimes. Yet the reality is more complex. This chapter examines the history of international crimes trials in Cambodia. It shows that Cambodia does not provide an example of linear progression towards acceptance of the norm of international criminal justice, but neither is there only stalling or complete rejection of this norm. It then demonstrates how international and Cambodian government actors and civil society have sought to influence Cambodia’s laws and institutions for investigating and prosecuting international crimes, before examining each of these mechanisms. This chapter argues that Cambodia’s interaction with international criminal justice disturbs any assumption that international law norms are diffused over time and from certain locations outside Cambodia (spaces) to within the country (direction).

After decades of military rule, internal conflict, and international sanctions, under a new government in Myanmar there was emerging opportunity to consider how, if at all, to respond to the serious human rights violations of previous decades, and address ongoing violence that persists today, including in Rakhine (involving the Rohingya), Shan and Kachin States, and in the South East of Myanmar. The relative lack of mechanisms for prosecuting international crimes, and government opposition towards International Criminal Court and United Nations investigations, suggest that Myanmar’s leaders have rejected the norm of international criminal justice. Yet this chapter presents a complex story of ongoing contestation. It first reveals the historical engagement with international criminal law in Myanmar. It then analyses the themes different actors raise when they seek to influence international criminal justice in relation to Myanmar, before analysing Myanmar’s laws and institutions for responding to international crimes. It concludes that while Myanmar represents a highly challenging context for encouraging the prosecution of international crimes, there is a dynamic process of engagement with this norm.

The Philippines signed the Rome Statute on 28 December 2000, adopted legislation to incorporate international crimes into domestic law in 2009, ratified the Rome Statute in 2011, and withdrew in 2018 (effective in March 2019). Institutional developments, the passage of laws, and public statements by Philippine leaders in the past indicated support for (and implementation of) the norm of international criminal justice. However, the lack of enforcement of the Philippines’ international crimes legislation and events since President Rodrigo Duterte took office suggest that the government of the Philippines has certainly not accepted the norm of international criminal justice. Rather, debate continues. This chapter outlines the ongoing saga of international criminal justice in the Philippines. It then explores how government and civil society actors have used their experiences and initiative to debate the laws and institutions for investigating and prosecuting alleged international crimes in the Philippines. The chapter analyses the key features of these mechanisms, which continue to be discussed and developed. It shows how approaches to international criminal justice in the Philippines have involved dynamic interactions and adaptation.

This chapter analyses whether states in Southeast Asia – focusing particularly on Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar – have accepted, rejected, or adapted ideas about international criminal justice. It confirms that there has been significant engagement with international criminal law in Southeast Asia. The chapter then assesses the benefits and limitations of a localisation framework for exploring this process. Using examples from the previous chapters, it explains how approaches to international criminal justice are adapted dynamically over time, across different spaces (not clearly delineated as local/international), and in varying directions (outside-in/inside-out). These findings present constructive ways to complement the ‘localisation’ approach. The chapter ends by identifying several practical implications of this analysis for those advocating for international criminal justice in Southeast Asia, including for the development and implementation of relevant legal frameworks. It argues for a nuanced approach to examining actors' engagement with international criminal justice that is transparent about its normative aims and learns from how diverse actors already draw on adapted arguments to influence legal responses to violence within and across different times and spaces.

International crimes are alleged to have occurred in the colonial period, within separatist conflicts (including in relation to Timor-Leste’s independence), during 1965 and Suharto’s subsequent presidency, and more recently, including in Papua. This chapter focuses on Indonesia’s national laws and institutions for prosecuting international crimes committed in Indonesia (as well as in East Timor prior to its independence as Timor-Leste in 2002). It reflects on the politicised history of international criminal law trials in post-colonial Indonesia. It then analyses statements made by representatives of foreign states and international organisations, the Indonesian government, and civil society about approaches to international criminal justice. It considers how this engagement has resulted in the adoption of laws that reflect some aspects of the norm of international criminal justice, but also amplify other principles and remain the object of debate – including planned amendments to the Criminal Code.

This introductory chapter highlights the significance and timeliness of this book in the context of ongoing alleged international crimes in Southeast Asia, alongside the legacy of colonialism, historic international crimes trials (particularly after World War II), and past atrocities. It then draws upon international criminal law and international relations, especially constructivist, literature to define the ‘norm’ of international criminal justice. It explains why this book draws upon constructivist localisation theories with reference to the concepts of time, space, and direction. This approach provides an explanation for the book’s method and structure.

Bousfield localisation, or more specifically, left Bousfield localisation, is an established tool to formally add more weak equivalences to a model category. The most common setting is localisation of spaces or spectra with respect to a homology theory: rather than the weak equivalences being isomorphisms of homotopy groups, one constructs a model structure with the homology isomorphisms as the weak equivalences. As a consequence, the homology isomorphisms become strict isomorphisms in the corresponding homotopy category. Therefore, we can think of Bousfield localisation as a good formal framework for inverting maps in the homotopy category. Typically, information is lost in this process, but some specific aspects may stand out clearer after localisation. We will see an example of this behaviour in the final section when we show that the p-local stable homotopy category has vast computational advantages over working with the stable homotopy category itself. We will also see how Bousfield localisation can help us gain insight into the deeper structure of the stable homotopy category via p-localisation, p-completion, K-theory and chromatic homotopy theory.

Our main theoretical contribution is the concept of the ‘global governed’, which we discuss as an umbrella concept for existing literatures on post-development, post-humanitarianism and post-protection. We also contribute ‘post-protection’, an analytical lens for critically engaging with the risks of protection as a form of top-down governance, and a means to recognise alternative forms of refugee-led social protection. This chapter presents these concepts and applies them to examine refugee-led social protection in East Africa. The ‘global governed’ enables us to ontologically focus on the collective action of refugees themselves, and the ways in which they mobilise to provide social protection. ‘Post-protection’ offers a heuristic framework through which to critically examine the interaction between top-down international institutions and bottom-up refugee community organisations (RCOs). Our main empirical question is: what explains variation in the scale and scope of refugee-led social protection? We seek to critically re-examine the provider-beneficiary relationship that characterises a range of policy fields, grounding our concepts in literatures that are fundamentally about the role of power in global governance. Our theoretical contributions critique the ‘global’ while rendering visible the ‘local’, highlighting hidden power relations and unquestioned institutional assumptions, while reasserting the subjectivity and agency of the marginalised.