Magister Legum - LLM / By any standard, victim participation is a relatively new phenomenon in international criminal law proceedings. Incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for crimes against umanity, war crimes, genocide and, more recently, aggression. As a result, great strides have been made in ensuring the direct participation of victims of grave violations of human rights in court proceedings against their perpetrators. Prior to this, grave violations of human rights committed during conflicts or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored or even if action was taken, victims of the crimes hardly had a ‘say’ in the proceedings. With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) new dawn in the proceedings of international criminal law has emerged. The statutes that govern the ICC and ECCC have given a voice to victims in court proceeding buy ensuring victims participation.Despite these advances, scholars have criticized victim participation for being inconsistent in its application at the International Criminal Court.1 The criticism has come from scholars who have highlighted the unintended consequences of victim participation in court proceedings, arguing that their participation has resulted in the under- or misrepresentation of the actual experience of survivors of war, mass violence, or repression. These problems have arisen largely because the need to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused and to protect their due process rights, to abide by the rules of evidence and procedure, and to conserve judicial resources all cut against victim-witnesses'ability to tell their stories at these tribunals thereby resulting in a limited, and sometimes inaccurate, record of victims' experience. / South Africa

Magister Legum - LLM / By any standard, victim participation is a relatively new phenomenon in international criminal law proceedings. Incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and, more recently, aggression. As a result, great strides have been made in ensuring the direct participation of victims of grave violations of human rights in court proceedings against their perpetrators. Prior to this, grave violations of human rights committed during conflicts or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored or even if action was taken, victims of the crimes hardly had a ‘say’ in the proceedings. With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) a new dawn in the proceedings of international criminal law has emerged. The statutes that govern the ICC and ECCC have given a voice to victims in court proceeding buy ensuring victims participation. Despite these advances, scholars have criticized victim participation for being inconsistent in its application at the International Criminal Court. The criticism has come from scholars who have highlighted the unintended consequences of victim participation in court proceedings, arguing that their participation has resulted in the under- or misrepresentation of the actual experience of survivors of war, mass violence, or repression. These problems have arisen largely because the need to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused and to protect their due process rights, to abide by the rules of evidence and procedure, and to conserve judicial resources all cut against victim-witnesses' ability to tell their stories at these tribunals thereby resulting in a limited, and sometimes inaccurate, record of victims' experience. Background: The idea that victims should be allowed to participate in international criminal proceedings stems from a broader movement over the last several decades advocating for restorative, as opposed to merely retributive justice. Proponents of this restorative justice movement maintain that “justice should not only address traditional retributive justice, i.e., punishment of the guilty, but should also provide a measure of restorative justice by, inter alia, allowing victims to participate in the proceedings and by providing compensation to victims for their injuries.” In other words, advocates of this movement believe that criminal justice mechanisms should serve the interests of victims, in addition to punishing wrongdoers, and that the participation of victims in criminal proceedings is an integral part of serving victims' interests. Although the concept of victim participation in criminal proceedings is not easily defined, it has been described as victims “being in control, having a say, being listened to, or being treated with dignity and respect.” Human rights activists supported the concept for several reasons. Many believed, as did victim advocates more generally, that participation in criminal proceedings has a number of potential restorative benefits, including the promotion of victims' “healing and rehabilitation.” Indeed, in its recommendations to the Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of the International Criminal Court (Preparatory Committee I), “participation is significant not only to protecting the rights of the victim at various stages of the proceeding, but also to advancing the process of healing from trauma and degradation.” Some believed that victim participation would bring the court “closer to the persons who have suffered atrocities” and thus increase the likelihood that victims would be satisfied that justice was done. set of recommendations on the ICC elements of crimes and rules of procedure and evidence, noted “the right of victims to participate in the proceedings was included in the Rome Statute to ensure that the process is as respectful and transparent as possible so that justice can be seen to be done . . .” Finally, and significantly for the purpose of this study, human rights activists thought that victim participation might help address the under- or misrepresentation of the experiences of victims. Research questions and objectives of the study: The question this research paper poses is whether victim participation has increased the visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors in the context of war, mass violence, or repression? Under the Rome Statute, victims of the world's most serious crimes were given unprecedented rights to participate in proceedings before the court. Nearly a decade later, a similar scheme was established to allow victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, created with UN support to prosecute atrocities committed by leaders of the Khmer Rouge during the period of 1975 to 1979. Although there are some significant differences in how the schemes work at the ICC and ECCC, both courts allow victims to participate in criminal proceedings independent of their role as witnesses for either the prosecution or defence. In other words, both have victim participation schemes intended to give victims a voice in the proceedings. Have these new participation schemes before the ICC and ECCC, in fact, helped in satisfying the victims? What impact have they had on the ability of survivors of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to tell their story and to talk about their experiences in their own words? In particular, has victim participation enabled more of them to tell their stories than would have been possible under the more traditional adversarial model employed by the ad hoc tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Has it allowed them to expand the historical record produced by these tribunals with narratives that would otherwise have been left out because of prosecutorial or judicial decisions not to prosecute violations committed against them? Has it enabled victims to communicate a richer, more nuanced picture of their experiences than they were able to in the context of prior tribunals? The aim is to explore whether these novel victim participation schemes, as implemented by the ICC and ECCC thus far, have actually allowed for greater recognition of victims' voices and experiences than was possible in proceedings before their predecessor tribunals. Have these schemes actually allowed victims to communicate a fuller and more nuanced picture of their experiences than they would have been able to do as victim-witnesses before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)? In other words, can the victim participation schemes at the ICC answer the call for increased visibility of the actual lived experience of survivors of human rights violations in the context of war, mass violence, or repression?.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, inwieweit Geschädigte von völkerstrafrechtlichen Verbrechen sich am Verfahren vor dem Internationalen Strafgerichtshof (IStGH) beteiligen können. Im Jahr 1998 wurde das Rom Statut des IStGH errichtet, welches erstmalig im Völkerstrafrecht die Möglichkeit für Geschädigte vorsieht, über die „Beteiligung“ als Zeuge hinaus aktiv am Verfahren vor dem IStGH teilzunehmen. Die Arbeit setzt die Normen des Rom Statuts zunächst in einen historischen Kontext. Sodann wird die Auslegung der Normen in den unterschiedlichen Verfahrensabschnitten umfassend anhand der gängigen Interpretationsmechanismen sowie der bisherigen Rechtsprechung erläutert. Da die Auslegung der Normen aufgrund der teilweise sehr weiten Fassung der Normen und der fehlenden Rechtsprechung weitestgehend ungeklärt war und zum großen Teil immernoch ist, stellt die Erläuterung der Auslegungsmöglichkeiten einen Schwerpunkt der Arbeit dar. Es erfolgt sodann eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage, inwieweit die bestehenden Regeln auf der einen Seite den Wünschen und Erwartungen der Geschädigten entsprechen, und inwieweit sie auf der anderen Seite mit den Rechten der Angeklagten und übergeordneten Interessen in Übereinstimmung zu bringen sind. Es werden Alternativen zum Internationalen Strafgerichtshof untersucht. Die Arbeit zeigt im Ergebnis Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der sogenannten Opferbeteiligung auf und erarbeitet Verbesserungsvorschläge zu dem derzeit bestehenden Modell. / When the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court was adopted in 1998, one of its innovations was that victims were granted an active role in the proceedings. This thesis is among the first to focus on the International Criminal Court’s power to enable victims to take part in the proceedings. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal framework of the participation system, taking into account relevant Court decisions. The study examines the position of victims in international criminal law, especially their rights to participate in all stages of the proceedings. It further explores to which extent the rules of the International Criminal Court correspond to the victims’ needs and wishes and on the other hand how the rules can be reconciled with the rights of the accused and other interests. The extent to which the ICC, as a criminal court, can and will at all help victims to overcome the consequences of war crimes. It will finally be reflected on some possible alternatives.

This thesis examines how the promise and institutionalization of 'justice for victims' has shaped the ICC's justice vision and identity. Drawing on interviews with 90 practitioners in The Hague, Kenya and Uganda, it undertakes a sociological and institutional analysis of how 'justice for victims' has evolved in the Court's first two decades through the definitions and redefinitions, pushes and pulls, strategies and miscalculations of the Court's diverse actors both in The Hague and in the field. It argues that the introduction of 'justice for victims' has led to a rift within the Court between those who embrace a narrow understanding of justice as 'fair trials' and those who see the ICC as an opening for broader justice processes. These rifts and gaps are reinforced by the Court's actors in the field such as victims' lawyers and intermediaries who sometimes assume political advocacy roles beyond what the Court's judges envisaged or follow their parochial interests on the ground. While the ICC's judges have increasingly curtailed victim participation and reparation in the court room, the Court's practices on the ground reflect an uneasy fusion of legal justice, development, local and national politics with a proliferation of new justice concepts including 'transformative justice' and 'gender justice'. So far, these justice contestations have not chipped away, much less undermined, the Court's legitimacy. Rather, the Court has thrived on its justice contradictions; its failure to commit to any particular justice vision while loosely relating to all possible visions, has made the Court impervious to critique. But the thesis will also show that 'justice for victims' at the ICC is schizophrenic: it is inherently unstable and its contradictory dynamics may at some point rip the concept apart - and with it the Court's legitimacy.

Domestic violence is classified as a widespread and a serious problem in society. The aim of the study was to look into possible challenges and factors of success experienced by employees within the Police Authority and the importance of victim participation in the investigation process of cases related to domestic violence in several police areas. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six different investigators at the investigation section focused on domestic violence at the Police Authority. The material was analyzed through a qualitative content analysis and linked to previous research as well as the theory of normalization of violence. The result showed challenges such as a lack of resources, where more investigators, child interrogators, IT forensics and administrative staff are desired to be able to meet the high workload. Further identified challenges are linked to confidentiality between authorities and other actors. The victim's participation in the investigation process is considered to be decisive unless other evidence is available in order to conduct an effective investigation and obtain a conviction in the case. / Våld i nära relationer klassas som ett omfattande och allvarligt samhällsproblem. Syftet med studien var att undersöka eventuella utmaningar och framgångsfaktorer som upplevdes av anställda inom Polismyndigheten samt vilken betydelse offrens medverkan har i utredningsprocessen av ärenden gällande våld i nära relationer i flera polisområden. Semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med sex olika utredare på utredningssektionen BINR (brott i nära relation) hos Polismyndigheten. Materialet analyserades utifrån en kvalitativ innehållsanalys och kopplades till tidigare forskning samt teorin om normaliseringsprocessen. Resultatet visade på utmaningar i form av främst resursbrist, där fler utredare, barnförhörsledare samt specialkompetenser såsom IT-forensiker och administrativ personal önskades för att kunna möta den höga arbetsbelastningen. Vidare identifierades utmaningar kopplat till sekretess mellan myndigheter och andra aktörer. Offrets medverkan i utredningsprocessen ansågs vara avgörande om inte annan stödbevisning fanns, för att kunna bedriva en effektiv utredning och få en fällande dom i ärendet.

L’action civile peut être exercée, au choix de la victime, soit devant les juridictions civiles soit devant les juridictions répressives (art. 15 et 16 CPPI). Quelle que soit la voie choisie, il existe d’importants liens entre l’action civile et l’action publique qui reflète une certaine dépendance de l’action civile à l’action publique. L’action civile exercée devant les juridictions répressives, principalement justifiée par le souci de simplifier et faciliter la procédure, est l’accessoire de l’action publique dans son existence, son exercice et son jugement. Lorsque l’action civile est exercée devant les juridictions civiles, les rapports entre ces deux actions se manifestent par deux règles complémentaires : le sursis à statuer et l’autorité de la chose jugée au pénal sur le civil (art. 227 CPCI et 18 CPPI). Principalement justifiées par le souci d’éviter des décisions contradictoires, ces règles obligent le juge civil à attendre la décision du juge pénal, et, ensuite, se conformer à cette décision. Cette recherche a étudiée toutes les manifestations juridiques des liens entre l’action publique et l’action civile telles qu’elles existent dans le droit positif iranien afin d’établir les conditions de la rationalisation de leur exercice à la lumière de l’expérience française. Cette étude propose donc des solutions afin de mettre fin aux effets indésirables de ces liens, surtout quant au principe d’autorité de la chose jugée au pénal sur le civil prévue expressément par l’article 18 du nouveau code de procédure pénale iranien 2015 / Civil action may be brought, by the option of the victim, to the civil courts or to the criminal courts (art. 15 and 16 CPPI). Regardless of the victim’choice, important links are created between the civil action and the public action. these links reflect a certain dependence of the civil action for public one. The civil action brought to the criminal courts is mainly justified by the need to simplify and facilitate the procedure. This action is such an incident to the public action in its existence, its practice and its judgment.When the civil action is brought to the civil courts, links between these two actions are manifested in two complementary rules : the stay of proceedings and the authority of res judicata on the civil criminal (art. 227 CPCI and 18 CPPI). These complementary rules are justified by the need to avoid conflicting decision. Therefore, they force the civil court to await the decision of the criminal court, and then comply with this decision. This thesis is a study of all legal manifestations of the links between public action and civil action as they exist in the Iranian criminal law regarding to the French experience in the matter. This study proposes solutios to end the negative effects of these links, especially on the principle of authority of res judicata on criminal civil expressly provide by the article 18 of the new Iranian criminal proceeding law