The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: A Distorting Mirror; Casting doubt on its actor-oriented approach in addressing the Rwandan genocide

The traditional approach to criminal justice faces the challenge of balancing multiple goals – usually expressed as deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution – which focus on crime control. A restorative approach seems needed in all societies that have suffered massive and collective victimisation, and must be kept in mind in Rwanda by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as it implements its overall strategy.The ICTR’s almost exclusive focus on an actor-orientated perspective, viewing the individual as a building block of the genocidal reality, distorts and obscures a structure-orientated perspective on the ethno-centric social reality that converted tens of thousands of Hutus into a mass of killers, turning on their friends, neighbours and colleagues. The main focus for the punishment of war criminals must remain at the national level, although the existence of an international tribunal legitimises the criminalisation of internal atrocities. The ugliness of internal strife and the political reality of the ethnic hatred cannot be isolated in an international courtroom for resolution

War crimes and realpolitik: international justice from World War I to the 21st century

x + 268 hlm., 23 cm

The military ascent into space: from playground to battleground: the new uncertain game in the heavens

The mastery of outer space as the basis of integrated battleground platforms is fast becoming a reality. As the two Gulf Wars and the Kosovo military campaign made clear, space assets are decisive in battle planning and execution. The contemporary move towards weaponization of space and its intersection with international law forms the basis of this article. This article analyses the militarization and weaponization of space. It is premised on the fact that the active move to militarization and weaponization of outer space that exposes the deficit of the international law space law regime. The article highlights the fact that the international space law legal regime now has a new game in the making for which it is in many ways ill equipped to handle

New frontiers, old problems: the war on terror and the notion of anticipating the enemy

The old truism, that international law is not a suicide pact, is forceful in an age of destructive weaponry. Nevertheless strategically, there is little precedent for a major military offensive against a state that has not proximately used force against the interests of the belligerent state. Legally, while a number of legitimate justifications might permit the use of force, an appropriate international law doctrine, under which the United States could execute the military campaign it recently successfully launched against Iraq, does not currently exist. But that lacuna was seemingly plugged with the ‘Bush Doctrine’ that advocates pre-emptive strikes against rogue states and/or entities involved in terrorism. The so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ articulates a new rule of international law that seeks to bring to life the doctrine of anticipatory self-defence as an appropriate means through which to combat terrorism (including states that actively support terrorism or that are themselves terror states in the sense of acquiring and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction)