Understanding UNITAD

Abstract

Abstract On 21 September 2017, the United Nations (UN) Security Council established the ‘United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL’ (UNITAD) and tasked it to collect, preserve, and store evidence of international crimes committed by the Islamic State in Iraq. The creation of UNITAD does not stand alone. Since 1963, the UN has mandated more than 80 non- or semi-judicial ad hoc ‘Investigative Mechanisms’ (IM) in response to atrocities and situations of international concern. Recently, the realm of UN investigation witnessed an ‘accountability-turn’: by lack of other criminal justice avenues, IMs are set up and mandated to gather evidence, qualify conducts, attribute responsibility and pave the way for prosecution. Ample attention has been paid to their output and impact, but how they constitute themselves as a means to their ends — how they in actual practice interpret their mandate — has been severely understudied. This study takes UNITAD as a case and explores why it is doing what it does, how it does it, and what the implications hereof can be. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, this explorative study describes the intended purpose, priorities and principles of the written mandate as agreed upon by the UN Security Council and the Government of Iraq, and analyses UNITAD’s interpretation of these parameters in practice. It concludes that UNITAD has taken a restrictive stance with respect to some aspects of the written mandate while seeking leeway with respect to others. This navigation — informed by politics, practicalities and personality — strongly implicates the prospects of transitional justice: whereas UNITAD was mandated to foster criminal accountability, it has and still can facilitate broader forms of justice too.