Peace Through Justice?: Evaluating the International Criminal Court

This thesis looks at the recently created International Criminal Court (ICC) and its early cases in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. The central questions are: how does the Court impact peace building in the war-torn countries whose cases it handles? And is there a tension between peace and justice in these cases? The case studies demonstrate that while rhetoric linking peace and justice dominates the Court, the ICC is ill equipped to address the complex interaction of the two in specific countries. The Court’s narrow mandate and powers mean that practical and political concerns dominate its decision-making to the extent that there is little space to give priority to local peace building