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Intervention and the ‘Justice Cascade’: Lessons from the Special Court for Sierra Leone on Prosecution and Civil War

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Abstract

In the ‘Justice Cascade’, Kathryn Sikkink argues that “foreign prosecutions and international tribunals can be cost-effective alternatives to military intervention.” Yet, the successes of the Special Court for Sierra Leone—in prosecuting former Liberian President Charles Taylor and in imposing accountability on the leaders of all armed groups regardless of political alignment—were dependent on a commitment by Western powers and international and regional organizations to a military victory against the rebels in Sierra Leone and coercive regime change in Liberia. The lesson that should be drawn from this case—which parallels that of other international tribunals set up during ongoing violence—is that the prospects for international criminal justice during civil wars are dependent on the political strategies adopted by outsiders to address the conflict and that taking criminal accountability seriously requires an interventionist rather than a consent-based approach to conflict resolution.

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Notes

  1. Former British High Commissioner for Sierra Leone, Peter Penfold (2013, p. 61) observed that the UN had served as moral guarantor for two prior Sierra Leonean peace agreements in Abidjan (1996) and Conakry (1997), which also included blanket amnesties, and never expressed any reservations.

  2. Freeman (2010, p. 52) notes that the ruling fell short of the position taken by some international lawyers and NGOs in their amicus briefs that the norm had already crystallized.

  3. For illustrations of this in advocacy and scholarship, see HRW (2009a, p. 61), Schabas (2006, p. 35), Robinson (2003, p. 496), Sadat (2013, pp. 312–313), and Tejan-Cole (2009, p. 225).

  4. Although he relied on UNAMSIL, Crane (2006, p. 79n13) also kept in the dark, the Secretary General’s special representative to UNAMSIL, the Nigerian diplomat Oluyemi Adeniji, because of his opposition to the SCSL.

  5. Contrary to the advocacy of human rights legalists, Crane (2010, pp. 212–213) argues that international justice is inherently political in scope and a prosecutor must be a “savvy politician and diplomat” in considering the diplomatic, security, and political implications of his actions. In a recent interview (Howden 2013), he criticized the chief prosecutors at the ICC for pursuing the cases against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto without considering the political implications or the likelihood of international backing for judicial action.

  6. While Bashir and Assad, like Taylor, have confronted insurgencies supported by hostile regional actors, neither the Baathists in Syria nor the National Congress Party in Sudan are currently at risk of being forced from power, as Taylor was in 2003. Moreover, major Western powers have been reluctant to intervene in Sudan, because they were pursing a consent-based approach to conflict resolution focusing on peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and implementing the North–South peace agreement, and in Syria, because of the fear of empowering Assad’s radical Islamist opponents.

  7. A case for the deploying of US Special Forces against the Lord’s Resistance Army, which had abducted more the 30,000 children as soldiers and sex slaves in northern Uganda, was made by Kenneth Roth (2010), the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. Arguments have also been made for intervention in Côte D’Ivoire (Dufka 2011) and Libya (Landler and Bilefsky 2011).

  8. These critiques are further elaborated in McAuliffe (2013, pp. 117–121), Snyder and Vinjamuri (2012).

  9. A list of former members of both the Charles Taylor and Samuel Doe governments and former rebel leaders who are members of the Liberian Parliament is presented in Dennis (2012, p. 6).

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  1. Department of Government, Colby College, 5310 Mayflower Hill Drive, Waterville, ME, 04901, USA

    Kenneth A. Rodman

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Rodman, K.A. Intervention and the ‘Justice Cascade’: Lessons from the Special Court for Sierra Leone on Prosecution and Civil War. Hum Rights Rev 16, 39–58 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-014-0324-4

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