UN and special tribunals

Question 1

Why was the UN special tribunals introduced?

Answer 1

• Needed to confront the issues of the 1990s - blocked because of the Cold War: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in conflicts.
• The UNSC authorised 4 UN war crimes tribunals - could try heads of states and set a precedent for the International Criminal Court to be established in 2002.

Question 2

Aims of the UN and special tribunals

Answer 2

• Bring justice and punish those accused of human rights abuses.
• Develop liberal principle of a global community.
• Publicise the horrors of war and genocide against humanity

Question 3

Yugoslavian Civil War (1992-2001)

Answer 3

• 2017 = convicted 83 war criminals: leaders of Serbia, military leaders and low-ranking soldiers.
• Related to the 1995 Srebrenca Massacre
• Radvoan Karadzic - sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Question 4

Cambodia (1975-79)

Answer 4

• Convicted later in the 1997 tribunal.
• Khmere Rouge government was responsible for over 2 million deaths.
• Key members of the government were imprisoned.

Question 5

Rwanda (1994)

Answer 5

• Trialled in 1997
• 61 individuals were convicted in complicity of genocide, including former PM jean Kambanda - first head of state convicted of genocide.
• Established that rape could be used as a way of perpetrating genocide.

Question 6

Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2002)

Answer 6

• 2002 Special Court tried the atrocities over the 10 year Civil War.
• 50,000 had been killed and many more deliberately maimed.
• 2012 = Liberian leader Charles Taylor - first leader convicted of war crimes.
• 15 others imprisoned for 25 years.

Question 7

Limitations of international tribunals

Answer 7

• Criticised for not focusing on other war crimes - inbuilt bias by the ‘victors’.
• 1945, the USA had killed 100,000 people by dropping the atomic bomb when Japan was on the verge of defeat.
• The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front also committed atrocities that the court never investigated - court accused it endorsed the ‘narrative of the war’.
• Charles Taylor’s trial was held in the Hague - accusations of neocolonial stereotypes that Africa cannot deliver justice itself.
• Likewise, Saddam was never tried but an international tribunal but by Iraqi courts (received the death penalty unlike the others).
• 2016 – China refused to attend a tribunal in the Philippines into its expansion into shoal islands.