Nerida Chazal, The ICC and Global Social Control: International Criminal Justice in Late Modernity

Abstract

‘The International Criminal Court and Global Social Control: International Criminal Justice in Late Modernity’ starts by highlighting the contradictions marking the International Criminal Court (ICC). A notorious one is the unimpeded (and even welcomed) travels around the world of the most wanted ICC fugitive, Omar Al-Bashir, while ICC officials are making hypertrophied speeches about accountability for international crimes perpetrators. Another one is the hyper-mediatized conviction of Thomas Lubanga for one single war crime, while conflicts worldwide, and especially in eastern Congo, are escalating exponentially. ‘Such contradictions’, writes Nerida Chazal, ‘define the International Criminal Court after a decade of existence’ (p 1). In particular, they show the tremendous gaps existing between the ICC’s rhetoric and its reality. Chazal describes the Court, and the actors making what the Court appears to be, as creating expectations and impunity gaps. This is certainly possible when one thinks of all the aims that have been attributed to the ICC: ending impunity, preventing international crimes, halting conflicts, ensuring peace, bringing a sense of justice to victims, providing reparations, punishing the perpetrators, highlighting areas where human rights abuse is taking place and setting standards of rights and justice. The book purports to submit these aims to a reality check in order ‘to explore the role and position of the Court in international society and its ability to be used as a tool of social control’ (p 2).