To answer these questions, my book examines the causes, rationales and consequences of what I call the complementarity turn – a paradigm shift toward national trials as the ultima ratio or end goal of international criminal justice. While domestic justice is now celebrated as superior to proceedings in The Hague and international prosecutors and judges use the principle of complementarity to foster cooperation with government actors, I argue that too much deference by international civil servants toward states reduces the likelihood of accountability and may enable national elites to consolidate authoritarian power. Drawing on research and interviews in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, the book develops a tripartite framework to analyse how states and tribunals work with or despite one another, and advocates more dynamic interactions between international and domestic stakeholders to strengthen the enforcement of international criminal law.
Anticipating the ongoing debates over the interplay of domestic, international and hybrid trials in Ukraine, the book is also an appeal to reflect more critically on the field's new conventional wisdom that ‘the future of international criminal justice is domestic’, and underscores the need for further research on the merits and drawbacks of both international and national accountability initiatives.
Awards:
Additional sources for the book:
The global approach to serious crimes is shifting to domestic trials. Here's what I found in 3 African countries, in The Conversation, 24 September 2023
La lutte contre l'impunité pour les crimes graves s'oriente vers des procès nationaux : voici les conclusions de mes recherches en trois pays africains, in: The Conversation Afrique, 3 October 2023
The Turn to Domestic Accountability in the Shadow of International Criminal Tribunals, in: OUP Blog, 9 September 2023
Media:
Podcast, European Society of International Law, Peace and Security Interest Group, 25 April 2024
Podcast, New Books Network, 23 March 2024
Trailer of book launch in Zurich, Switzerland, 8 June 2023
Full video of book launch in Zurich, Switzerland, 8 June 2023
A Twitter thread summarising the book's arguments
Oxford University Press, Official publisher webpage
Free Table of Contents
Book Reviews:
"a first-rate piece of scholarship that should be required reading for anyone studying the impact of international criminal justice on the domestic rule of law. Its research design is a role-model for the structured focused comparison of case studies and is a necessary complement – and challenge – to some of the quantitative analyses in the social sciences by fleshing out the data points with the real world impacts international judicial interventions on the ground. Finally, it should be read and consulted not only by scholars, but by prosecutors, NGOs, international civil servants and diplomats in thinking critically about the difficult legal, political, and ethical tradeoffs implicit in their policies and their advocacy."
"an impressive scholarly work on the intersection between international and domestic accountability for mass atrocities, which does not shy away from the complexities of the topic, presents a rich comparative analysis of different case studies, and raises important questions for the future of international criminal law."
