Fachkonferenz
Details
The African Expert Study Group on International Criminal Law, which has been established under the auspices of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in 2010, will host its first Annual Meeting from 23rd - 26th September 2011 in Brussels..
On Monday, 26th September the judicial experts, who focus their research on the implementation of the Rome Statute and who are equally practitioners in the field, will discuss with an interested public on two important aspects: the continuous relevance of special crime tribunals for international justice as well as the perceived politicisation of international criminal justice..
The arrest of Radko Mladic has brought the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a special court that was already in the process of wrapping-up, to the limelight again. It has become a milestone in the fight against impunity. The trial against Mladic will benefit from previous experiences of the ICTY as well as from the further development of the international justice system during the last decades. Hybrid courts, such as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), or the Special tribunal of Lebanon, have equally given new impetus to the fight against impunity but have also alluded to the problems international criminal justice faces in the constant search for equilibrium between peace and reconciliation on the one hand and justice on the other.
Due to the investigations, warrants of arrest and indictments against various African leaders by the ICC, the Rome Statute is now perceived by the broader African public as being biased against African states. The comparatively quick and unprecedented warrant of arrest against Colonel Ghaddafi contributed to this perception but also underlined not only the close nexus of international justice and politics but also the constraints the latter faces when international justice moves at its own speed.
