New Academic Article! Targeting Justice: Targets, Non-Targets and the Prospects for Peace with Justice

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Mark Kersten

Dear readers,

I am very happy to announce that I have had a new article published in the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, entitled “Targeting Justice: Targets, Non-Targets and the Prospects for Peace with Justice“. The piece explores how the decisions at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to target some perpetrators for prosecution and not others determine the ICC’s impact on conflict resolution and peace-making processes. Specifically, I seek to contradict the widespread view that it is the targets of ICC arrest warrants that are most likely to refuse to negotiate peace. Through the cases of Libya and Northern Uganda, I instead argue that it is the Court’s non-targets which tend to ‘dig their heals in’ and commit to political violence in order to win their war.

I have uploaded a copy of the article online, which you can access here. The abstract follows below. I hope it is of interest to some of you and, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and read your comments!

Ongoing conflicts are increasingly accompanied by calls for judicial interventions by the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has led to an impassioned debate regarding the effects that ICC interventions have on conflict dynamics and peace processes. A primary argument within this debate is that the targets of ICC arrest warrants will reject participating peace negotiations and instead commit themselves to political violence. This paper argues that it just as likely that actors not targeted by the Court may reject negotiating with their adversaries and thus commit to violence. The paper demonstrates this dynamic by examining two ICC interventions: northern Uganda and Libya. In both cases, the ICC’s intervention legitimized its non-targets – the government in Uganda and the coalition of intervening forces and opposition rebels in Libya – while bolstering their commitment to a military solution and their rejection of a political compromise to their respective conflicts. Ultimately, it is concluded, if both international justice and conflict resolution are to be pursued within the same contexts, it is critical to dispel popular assumptions in order to better understand the full spectrum of the ICC effects on conflict and peace dynamics.

The whole article can be found here.

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About Mark Kersten

Mark Kersten is an Assistant Professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada, and a Senior Consultant at the Wayamo Foundation in Berlin, Germany. Mark is the founder of the blog Justice in Conflict and author of the book, published by Oxford University Press, by the same name. He holds an MSc and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA (Hons) from the University of Guelph. Mark has previously been a Research Associate at the Refugee Law Project in Uganda, and as researcher at Justice Africa and Lawyers for Justice in Libya in London. He has taught courses on genocide studies, the politics of international law, transitional justice, diplomacy, and conflict and peace studies at the London School of Economics, SOAS, and University of Toronto. Mark’s research has appeared in numerous academic fora as well as in media publications such as The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, BBC, Foreign Policy, the CBC, Toronto Star, and The Washington Post. He has a passion for gardening, reading, hockey (on ice), date nights, late nights, Lego, and creating time for loved ones.
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