Introduction

Efforts to work against the practice of impunity for major international crimes and violations of fundamental human rights and to develop international guidelines against the practice are discussed

Lessons from the Americas: Guidelines for International Response to Amnesties for Atrocities

The impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of human rights violations, thanks in part to amnesty laws, is summarized. The international community should adopt guidelines to assist their own officials in responding to future amnesties

International Guidelines Against Impunity: Facilitating Accountability

Reasons for a consistent pattern of compromise when it comes to impunity for international crimes and human rights violations are discussed. Guidelines are presented for facilitating accountability for these crimes

Perpetual Impunity: Lessons learned from the global system of rendition and secret detention

It is now well documented that the Blair government was colluding at the highest levels in the global system for the rendition, detention and interrogation of terror suspects, at the same time as repeatedly denying any involvement. This paper seeks to explain why the UK so confidently maintained its position of denial. The main argument is that involvement in the global rendition system was facilitated and protected by an architecture of impunity. That is to say that the global rendition system deliberately consisted of a set of practices that were designed to ensure impunity for those agents involved at various levels, particularly Western governments and their intelligence agencies. Furthermore, if aspects of a state’s involvement were exposed, the architecture of impunity was sufficiently robust that the state could control the level of exposure. For example, the state could allow the light to be shone on certain aspects but could keep others very much in the dark. The state could also take specific actions to mitigate the effects, for example by withholding key information, destroying evidence, or by deflecting attention. Finally, where state involvement was exposed, again because the architecture of impunity was so robust, the authorities were in a strong position to seriously hamstring or avert investigations into wrongdoing. We conclude by offering some reflections on what this tells us about the challenges of holding governments to account for human rights violations of this nature, especially where they arise through a transnational network of state violence/crime

The politics of impunity: a study of journalists’ experiential accounts of impunity in Bulgaria, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mexico and Pakistan

Definitions of impunity regarding crimes against journalists have thus far been too narrow. Therefore we propose a new approach to understanding impunity as also being grounded in journalists’ lived reality and perceptions to better understand the complexity and breadth of impunity. It is based on the findings obtained through a set of semi-structured interviews with 40 editors and senior journalists in five countries and expressed in a new typology of impunity. We argue that what we call the ‘Politics of Impunity’ is a policy of governance whereby impunity is used as a political tool by the state and state-sponsored actors to achieve journalistic self-censorship. This is done through the deliberate deprivation of private autonomy brought about by the enforced exile of journalists into a ‘space of exception’ where they are both within and beyond the law. The exercise of the ‘Politics of Impunity’ in an increasing number of states creates an environment that only allows for politically compliant journalism

Bounded Rationality in Bargaining Games: Do Proposers Believe That Responders Reject an Equal Split?

Puzzled by the experimental results of the 'impunity game' by Bolton and Zwick (1995) we replicate the game and alter it in a systematic manner. We find that although almost nobody actually rejects an offered equal split in a bargaining game, proposers behave as if there would be a considerably large rejection rate for equal splits. This result is inconsistent with existing models of economic decision making. This includes models of selfish players as well as models of social utility and reciprocity, even when combined with erroneous decision making. Our data suggests that subjects fail to foresee their opponent's decision even for one step in our simple bargaining games. We consider models of bounded rational decision making such as rules of thumb as explanations for the observed behavioral pattern.ultimatum game, dictator game, impunity game, social utility, bounded rationality

Getting Away With Murder: CPJ's 2011 Impunity Index

Ranks countries by level of anti-press violence, based on the number of unsolved murders of journalists as a percentage of the population. Examines trends, including improvements in Colombia and Russia and worsening conditions in Iraq and Mexico

Evolving Political Accountability in Kenya

published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Letter to US Trade Policy Staff Committee

This letter states the official comments of the ILRF regarding the US Free Trade Agreement with the Republic of Colombia. The ILRF maintains that prior to entering into an FTA with Colombia the US Government must require that the Colombian government achieve certain preconditions that will ensure that all workers can freely exercise their right to freedom of association