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The Dilemma of International Justice

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee:
Stewart M. Patrick, Senior Fellow and Director, Program on Global Governance
Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

July 28, 2008

Stewart M. Patrick, a former member of the State Department's Policy Planning staff, notes the surge in developing international criminal law since the end of the Cold War, amid mixed results. In the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which will soon hear the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, Stewart sees progress in helping countries like Serbia turn a corner. But in relation to Sudan, he notes fears that plans by the International Criminal Court prosecutor to indict the Sudanese president for crimes in Darfur will only prolong the conflict. "In some cases, it may be worthwhile to at least defer the question of prosecution to get an immediate end to the conflict," Patrick says.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has learned that the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, was arrested in Belgrade. Secondly, the prosecutor in the International Criminal Court has said he wants to bring an indictment against the president of Sudan for genocidal crimes. There are a number of international courts of justice now. Does this all stem back to the Nuremberg trials after the end of the Second World War?

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a tremendous movement in the development of international criminal law. We've seen a striking evolution [in] efforts to try to end impunity for the most horrific crimes, including crimes against international humanitarian law and gross violations of human rights. In the past there were a number of efforts at an international level to ensure that perpetrators of these crimes were made accountable. The most famous ones, historically, were in the wake of the Second World War, as you mentioned, the Nuremberg trials, and then the tribunals in Tokyo.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.