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Is International Criminal Justice the Handmaiden of the Contemporary Imperial Project? A TWAIL Perspective on Some Arenas of Contestations

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International Criminal Law—A Counter-Hegemonic Project?

Part of the book series: International Criminal Justice Series ((ICJS,volume 31))

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Abstract

The construction of contemporary international criminal justice seems to have followed a trajectory defined by the inescapable colonial origin, history and purpose of modern international law. Notwithstanding the professed successes and progress made towards the establishment of a universal standard or notion of justice, Post-World War II international criminal justice remains an essentially imperial ideal intolerant of a plurality of visions of justice and whose resistance and legitimacy in the Global South is often obfuscated by media representation. In this chapter, I identify four arenas of contestations in this regard and examine each of them to demonstrate that international criminal justice has not shed its historical antecedents that characterised its previous manifestations in previous eras. These arenas of contestations—the supposed universality of legal norms of international criminal justice; the alleged inherent selectivity of international criminal justice in the prosecution of perpetrators; the categories of crimes; and the establishment of its foremost institutions for its enforcement. The chapter will adopt TWAIL as an analytical framework to expose the manifest contradictions in the construction of international criminal justice and some of the legal problems thereby created. I argue that international criminal justice remains a tool in the service of hegemonic international law.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Werle and Jessberger 2014, p. 1.

  2. 2.

    For an assessment of the various perspectives to these contestations, see the collection of papers in De Vos et al. 2015; Roach 2009. See also generally Clarke 2009, Clarke 2019.

  3. 3.

    Hoile 2017, pp. 278–310.

  4. 4.

    The term ‘Third World’ and the ‘Global South’ are used interchangeably in this chapter not in the geographical sense but to refer to peoples (once under colonial domination) wherever located but mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and their continuous struggles in resistance to their oppression. For an explanation of the continued relevance of the term, see Chimni 2006, pp. 4–7. For an exposition of how the term is frequently used in TWAIL scholarship, see generally Rajagopal 1998–1999, pp. 1–20; Mickelson 1998, pp. 355–362; Baxi 2002, pp. 713–714; Falk 2016, pp. 1943–1945; Anghie 2004, p. xiii; Anghie et al. 2003, vii–viii; Ngugi 2002, pp. 73–106.

  5. 5.

    Reynolds and Xavier 2016, p. 962.

  6. 6.

    Early critics include Rubin 1994, pp. 7–11; Rubin 1997, p. 183; Mutua 1997, p. 167; Morris 2001, pp. 13–66.

  7. 7.

    Gathii 2020a, b. TWAIL has been described as consisting of two broad generational eras that are separable but not compartmentalised by a paradigmatic shift from TWAIL I to TWAIL II. The first represents a generation of post-independent international legal scholars and activists from the global South who sought to reform international law from within while the second represents scholars who read the failures of the reform efforts of their forebears as evidence and a call for a ‘systematic process of resistance to the negative aspects of international law [which] must be accompanied with continuous claims for reform. Resistance, not abandonment, becomes a position that fuels their approach to international law and their tool to reform, to reconstruct, the international normative project and the world order.’ See Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 209. For a critique of the ‘periodization’ of TWAIL, see Galindo 2016, pp. 39–56.

  8. 8.

    Mutua 2000, p. 32; Gathii 2011, p. 45; Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 199.

  9. 9.

    TWAIL was both a response to (the) history of slavery and colonial subjugation and a proposition for the prevailing material conditions in the third world, see Mutua 2000, p. 32.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 31; Anghie 2004, p. 111; Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 197.

  11. 11.

    See Mickelson 1998, pp. 353–419; Rajagopal 2002–2003, pp. 145–172; see generally Bedjaoui 1979; the collection of chapters in Anghie et al. 2003; Falk et al. 2008.

  12. 12.

    See generally Anghie 2004.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 144. Chimni has boldly asserted that ‘I believe that modern international law is the instrument of choice for imperialism to intervene in all aspects of local, national and international life’, see Chimni 2012, p. 1168.

  14. 14.

    Reynolds and Xavier 2016, pp. 959–983; Falk et al. 2006, p. 711.

  15. 15.

    Clarke 2019, p. 180. See generally Kiyani 2015a, pp. 129–208.

  16. 16.

    Gathii 2020a, b, p. 15.

  17. 17.

    Kiyani et al. 2016a, b, pp. 915–920.

  18. 18.

    See Journal of International Criminal Justice 2016, Symposium on Third World Approaches to International Criminal Law, pp. 915–1009; AJIL Unbound 2015, Symposium on TWAIL Perspectives on ICL, IHL and Intervention, pp. 252–276; Kiyani 2016a, b, pp. 255–259.

  19. 19.

    Kiyani et al. 2016a, b, p. 920.

  20. 20.

    Mutua 2000, pp. 31–40; Anghie and Chimni 2003, pp. 77–103; Okafor 2008, pp. 371–378.

  21. 21.

    See Okafor 2008, pp. 372 et seqq.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., pp. 373, 375.

  23. 23.

    See Anghie and Chimni 2003, p. 77.

  24. 24.

    Okafor 2008, p. 337.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 377. See Hippolyte 2016, p. 39.

  26. 26.

    Mutua 2000, p. 31.

  27. 27.

    See Reynolds and Xavier 2016, p. 978.

  28. 28.

    Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 97

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 199.

  30. 30.

    Chimni 2006, p. 18.

  31. 31.

    Mutua 2000, p. 2.

  32. 32.

    Eslava and Pahuja 2011, p. 104.

  33. 33.

    Anghie and Chimni 2003, pp. 77, 87, citing an example of this initial exclusionary tendencies. See also Mutua 2019b; Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 200, describing it as a ‘conceptual blackbox’.

  34. 34.

    See Anghie and Chimni 2003, at footnote 22.

  35. 35.

    Roth 2000, p. 2065.

  36. 36.

    D’Souza 2012, p. 414.

  37. 37.

    See Chap. 5 by Ishita Chakrabarty and Guneet Kaur in this volume.

  38. 38.

    Ibid.

  39. 39.

    For example, D’Souza points out that there is a difference between how Obiora Okafor uses the word ‘Third World’ in his article Newness and Imperialism’. See Okafor 2008, p. 307, and how Mutua 2000 deploys the same term in his article on ‘What is TWAIL’. See D’Souza 2012, p. 425.

  40. 40.

    See generally D’Souza 2012.

  41. 41.

    Okafor 2008, p. 372; Chimni 2017, pp. 14–18.

  42. 42.

    Okafor 2005, p. 176.

  43. 43.

    See generally Anghie 2004; Gathii 2000, p. 2067.

  44. 44.

    Hippolyte 2016, p. 40.

  45. 45.

    Anghie 2004, pp. 4, 56, 201–203.

  46. 46.

    Anghie and Chimni 2003, p. 82.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., p. 803.

  48. 48.

    Ibid.

  49. 49.

    Reynolds and Xavier 2016, p. 962.

  50. 50.

    Gathii 2020a, p. 2.

  51. 51.

    Gathii 2020b.

  52. 52.

    Jackson 1945, pp. 98–99.

  53. 53.

    Ibid.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., p. 99; Werle and Jessberger 2014, p. 5. See Article 6(b) of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, attached to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945, International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945—1 October 1946, Vol. I, p. 10.

  55. 55.

    Anghie 2004, p. 56.

  56. 56.

    See generally Anghie 2004, particularly Chapter 3.

  57. 57.

    Each of the Allied powers appointed a judge to the IMT and it has been argued that rather than an expression of justice administered through the collective will of the international community, the IMT reflected the power relations between the victorious Allied Powers and their vanquished Axis enemies. See Reynolds and Xavier 2016, p. 11.

  58. 58.

    Mutua 2019a, pp. 20–21.

  59. 59.

    Kaleck 2020, pp. 11–12.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., p. 12.

  61. 61.

    Mutua 2019a, p. 20. As Mutua puts it the ‘the devaluation and worthlessness with which the world views black life, and has viewed black life for the past 500 years’ has been made possible because international law has stamped Africa and Africans with a tag of ‘sub-humanity’ for purposes of European exploitation. See for detailed examples of the atrocities committed by colonial authorities in the Third World, Kaleck 2020, pp. 10–15. Professor James Thuo Gathii, in his 2020 Jindal Global Law School Lecture argues that international law as it had crystallised at the beginning of the 20th Century (international human rights law, international humanitarian law and customary international humanitarian law under the League of Nations were such that Great Britain had a carte blanche to carry out mass atrocities in its colonies in Africa (e.g. the Benin Massacre of 1897) two years before the Hague Regulations of 1899; Germany could execute the Herero and Nama Genocides in Namibia in 1904, five years after the Hague Regulations and three years before the 1907 Convention.

  62. 62.

    I have elaborated on the role of the UN Security Council under Article 13(b) of the ICC Statute. See Iyi 2019, pp. 391–417.

  63. 63.

    Mutua 2000, p. 42.

  64. 64.

    Kiyani 2015b, p. 6.

  65. 65.

    Reynolds and Xavier 2016, p. 962.

  66. 66.

    See generally Clarke 2019.

  67. 67.

    For example, the new Prosecutor of the ICC recently announced that the ICC investigations in Afghanistan would only focus on crimes committed by the Taliban and ISIS. In other words, Western forces would most likely be excluded. See (Office of the Prosecutor 2021) the Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A. A. Khan, following the application for an expedited order under article 18(2) seeking authorisation to resume investigations in the Situation in Afghanistan, 27 September 2021, https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=2021-09-27-otp-statement-afghanistan. Accessed 7 October 2021.

  68. 68.

    Statistically, there is a huge difference in the application of universal jurisdiction to prosecute alleged perpetrators from the Global North and the Global South. See Kaleck 2020, p. 13.

  69. 69.

    See the Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, https://www.icty.org/en/press/final-report-prosecutor-committee-established-review-nato-bombing-campaign-against-federal. Accessed 28 January 2022; see also Amnesty International 2000, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) /NATO: “Collateral damage” or unlawful killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force, 5 June 2000, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur70/018/2000/en/. Accessed 20 October 2021; see Anghie and Chimni 2003, p. 91. See also Krever 2014, p. 72.

  70. 70.

    UN Security Council 2011, Resolution 1973, S/Res/1973 (2011).

  71. 71.

    Amnesty International 2012b; Amnesty International 2012a.

  72. 72.

    Khan, 27 September 2021, https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=2021-09-27-otp-statement-afghanistan. Accessed 7 October 2021.

  73. 73.

    Moreno Ocampo was alleged to have been taking orders from Washington on the indictment of Al Bashir. See Krever 2016. At the same time the US has for example adopted the Hague Invasion Act, it made sure that under the same UN Security Council resolution through which Sudan was referred to the ICC, US and US nationals were offered immunity from prosecution for whatever international crimes they might commit. The UK and France may have been less explicit or brazen in their own expositions, but recent developments indicate that the UK in particular has vowed that no UK troops accused of committing international crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria would appear before the ICC. To be fair, Australia had investigated misconduct by its troops, but those accused would be standing trial in Australia and not the ICC. Why? The ICC operates on the basis of complementarity.

  74. 74.

    Krever 2016. The Court has long been accused of bias against Africans and for unfairly targeting Africa. So much so that the Court was cynically labelled the ‘International Caucasian Court’ by Sheriff Bojang the Information Minister of the Gambia.

  75. 75.

    Krever 2016.

  76. 76.

    Ibid.

  77. 77.

    Clarke 2019, p. 36. Defenders of the ICC point at the composition of the Court to refute allegations of bias and selectivity. But as Tor reminds us, having a black President and Attorney General and judges has not stopped the structural violence and racism against African-Americans that defines the US criminal justice system. While an African Prosecutor or Judge or any other judge at the ICC for that matter may not be overtly targeting Africa and Africans, this does not disprove the existence of institutional racism and systemic and structural violence perpetuated through institutions such as the ICC and which are usually subtle and seldom discernible. The example of Moreno Ocampo and his legacy as Prosecutor of the ICC in relation to the situations investigated in Africa demonstrate (i) the reincarnation of the civilising mission of colonial times, and (ii) how the ICC operates as instrument to carry forward the colonial project and imperialism. It is immaterial that the ICC was initially conceived as a ‘counter-hegemonic’ project by being set up by treaty ratified by States. But by subjecting the ICC to the authority of the UN Security Council through Article 13(b) and 16 of the Rome Statute, the ICC, once again re-enacts Nuremberg—that international criminal justice is essentially an instrument of neo-colonialism and judicial imperialism.

  78. 78.

    See generally Mutua 2001, pp. 201–245.

  79. 79.

    See Part VI of the ICC Statute dealing with different aspect of the Trial process before the Court.

  80. 80.

    Anghie and Chimni 2003, p. 202.

  81. 81.

    Eslava and Pahuja 2011, p. 108; Mutua 2000 p. 37; Kiyani 2015b, p. 31.

  82. 82.

    See Article 17(1)(a) of the ICC Statute on the question of admissibility of cases before the ICC.

  83. 83.

    Tzouvala 2016, p. 267.

  84. 84.

    Eslava and Pehuja 2012, p. 211.

  85. 85.

    See generally Okafor and Ngwaba 2015, pp. 90–108.

  86. 86.

    Baxi 2002, pp. 713–714.

  87. 87.

    ICC, Situation on Uganda in the Case of The Prosecutor v. Dominic Ongwen, Judgement of 4 February 2021, ICC 02/04-01/15 (TC).

  88. 88.

    Hippolyte 2016, p. 42.

  89. 89.

    Baguma 2012, pp. 31–43 at 37–38, 41; Ingber 2021.

  90. 90.

    Anghie 2004, p. 114.

  91. 91.

    Eslava and Pahuja 2012, p. 199.

  92. 92.

    See Article 46C of the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights adopted in June 2014 (African Union 2014).

  93. 93.

    See Clarke 2019, p. 205.

  94. 94.

    See Article 46C of the Malabo Protocol.

  95. 95.

    See Amnesty International 2017.

  96. 96.

    See Triffterer 1999, pp. 98–99. See also (UN 1997) UN Doc. A/AC.249/1997/L.5, pp. 16–17.

  97. 97.

    Trifterer 1999, p. 98.

  98. 98.

    Ibid., p. 99.

  99. 99.

    See generally Bassiouni 1999, pp. 443–469.

  100. 100.

    Clarke 2019, p. 58.

  101. 101.

    Clarke 2019, pp. 104, 119 et seq.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., p. 184.

  103. 103.

    Gathii 2020a, b, p. 14; Clarke 2019, pp. 33–34, 58, 60.

  104. 104.

    Clarke 2019, p. 212.

  105. 105.

    The International Criminal Law section of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR), ranging from the ‘flawed process followed in the drafting of the Protocol’ and issues of human and financial capacity and potential delays and their impact on the fair trial process. These will not be unique to the ACJHR as the ICTY and ICTR. Even the experience of the ICC so far does not suggest anything different in terms of incommensurability of resources expended with successful prosecutions. Perhaps the more serious concern is the prospect of overlapping jurisdiction between the ACJHR and the ICC which has been subject to debates with strong opposing views from both sides.

  106. 106.

    Gathii 2020a, b, pp. 2, 14–16.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., p. 6.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. African Centre for Transnational Criminal Justice, Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa

    John-Mark Iyi

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  1. John-Mark Iyi
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Correspondence to John-Mark Iyi .

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  1. Juristische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Florian Jeßberger

  2. Juristische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Leonie Steinl

  3. Juristische Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Kalika Mehta

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Iyi, JM. (2023). Is International Criminal Justice the Handmaiden of the Contemporary Imperial Project? A TWAIL Perspective on Some Arenas of Contestations. In: Jeßberger, F., Steinl, L., Mehta, K. (eds) International Criminal Law—A Counter-Hegemonic Project?. International Criminal Justice Series, vol 31. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-551-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-551-5_2

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