1st Edition
Defendants and Victims in International Criminal Justice Ensuring and Balancing Their Rights
This volume considers a variety of key issues pertaining to the rights of defendants and victims at International Criminal Courts (ICTs) and explores how best to balance and enhance the rights of both in order to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of international criminal proceedings.
The rights of victims are becoming an increasingly important issue at ICTs. Yet, at the same time, this has to be achieved without having a detrimental impact upon on the rights of the defence and the efficiency of the courts. This book provides analyses of issues on the rights of both the accused and the victims. By discussing matters concerning these two pivotal actors in international criminal justice within the same volume, the work highlights that there are intrinsic and intense conflicting and converging relationships between victims and the accused, particularly in terms of their rights. While most of the chapters focus mainly on either the accused or the victims, others discuss both at the same time. The work strikes a fine balance between, on the one hand, classic topics on the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims and, on the other, topics which have been largely unexplored and/or which require new angles or perspectives. Additionally, there are some chapters which approach both the rights of the accused and the rights of the victims in new contexts and/or under novel perspectives. The book as a whole provides a discussion of the two sides of this important coin of international criminal justice.
The work will be an essential resource for academics, practitioners and students with an interest in the field of international criminal law. It will also be of interest to human rights scholars who are working with the rights of victims and the accused.
Foreword Geir Ulfstein and Andreas Føllesdal;
Chapter 1 Introduction;
Juan Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo and Joanna Nicholson;
Chapter 2 The Content of Internationally Recognised Human Rights under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;
Sergii Masol;
Chapter 3 For Better or Worse: The Rights of Defendants and Victims before the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights;
Oliver Windridge;
Chapter 4 Balancing Prejudice: Fair Trial Rights and International Procedural Decisions Relating to Evidence;
Rogier Bartels;
Chapter 5 UNSC sanctions regimes and the ICC: arguments against cooperation for arrest and investigative purposes in light of defendants’ rights;
Alice Riccardi;
Chapter 6 The Presence of the Accused During Trial: Bridging the Gap Between Mandatory Presence and In Absentia Trials;
Talita de Souza Dias and Tsvetelina van Bentham;
Chapter 7 Useful in theory, useless in practice? The right of the defence to challenge the jurisdiction of international criminal courts and tribunals;
Michail Vagias;
Chapter 8 The ICTY and the balancing act: reconciliation as rehabilitation;
Dejana Radisavljevic;
Chapter 9 The Politics of Victim Participation in the International Criminal Court: Does politically motivated victim participation have an impact on the legitimacy of the proceedings?;
Kirsten Bowman;
Chapter 10 Protecting victims who testify before the ICC: tensions and balances with the defendants’ right to a fair trial;
Rossella Pulvirenti;
Chapter 11 The Legal Effect of a Reparations Order and the Rights of those Persons Subject to it;
Anthony Abato;
Chapter 12 Final Reflections on Defendants and Victims in International Criminal;
Proceedings
Juan Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo and Joanna Nicholson;
Biography
Dr Juan Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo, Pluricourts, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway.
Dr Joanna Nicholson, Pluricourts, University of Oslo, Norway.
