Theodor Meron is President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Here he is in conversation with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on matters relating to the development of the ICC, and it’s worth a listen. Three topics of discussion caught my interest.
The first of them – in the first five minutes of the interview – concerns how effective the work of the ICC and other international tribunals is in acting as a deterrent. Meron is more sanguine about this than Sackur, at least in believing that the deterrent effect will gradually be strenthened with the increase in international criminal prosecutions for crimes against humanity. But an important point not mentioned by either of them in this connection is that there are reasons other than deterrence for such prosecutions. These are reasons of simple justice. We should prosecute people for whom there is powerful prima facie evidence of their being responsible for grave crimes against other human beings, otherwise we implicitly declare, as a human community, that such crimes don’t matter.
The second topic of discussion touches on the conflicting concerns of criminal justice and various political consideration – such as reconciliation. On this Meron quite properly emphasizes the autonomy of criminal justice vis-à-vis political calculations of one kind and another, however important these may be.
Finally, there’s the issue of the lack of universality in the ICC system, with the US and other countries not signed up to the Rome Statute. It’s a point discussed in this earlier post of mine. In face of Sackur’s questioning, Meron insists, rightly in my view, that an incomplete system of international criminal justice is better than none at all. Would it be better, he asks, if there were no prosecutions? (Via.)