Magister Legum / In the aftermath of World War Two, the International Community has shown a renewed commitment towards the protection of human rights. However, whether during wars or under dictatorial regimes, numerous human rights abuses occurred everywhere in the world, from Latin America to Eastern Europe and from Southern Europe to Africa. Countries which experienced oppressive governance or outrageous atrocities has to address the legacies of their past on the return of democratic rule or peace. In other words, they had to emerge from the darkness of dictatorship or civil war in order to establish a democracy. Today, after 14 years of civil war, Liberia is faced with the challenge of achieving a successful transition where the imperatives of truth, justice and reconciliation need to be met. The purpose of this research paper was to make some recommendations on the way the accountability process in Liberia should be shaped as far as prosecution is concerned. / South Africa

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper will explore the history of the outbreak of religious related violence in Nigeria and the response of Nigeria and the African Union to the acts of the Boko Haram group both legally and procedurally. The intervention of the ICC as a viable option to combat the scourge of the group will also be examined. Other options such as trial in the Court of third States under the principle of universal jurisdiction and a special court jointly facilitated by the States involved will also be assessed.

International humanitarian law, international criminal law and international human rights law all share the common goal of seeking to regulate the behavior of international actors in relation to the three most serious offences under international law - genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. International legal rules, processes and institutions within these three areas of law represent the international community's ongoing quest to address and prevent the commission of these crimes - to create "a more humane world under law." International law has therefore been relied upon as the primary - arguably exclusive - mechanism for prescribing rules of conduct and for enforcing prescribed rules. It is clear, however, that the legal framework alone has not been able to bridge the gap between internationally agreed standards and substantive practice on the part of international actors. That international law comprises only a partial solution to the problem of human rights atrocities is well recognized. It is argued here that the international community's preoccupation with international law as the means for regulating State and individual behavior in this area has in fact contributed to continuing problems of non-compliance as much as it has assisted in engendering compliance with the law. In other words, law is as much a part of the problem as it is a part of the solution. It is argued that the international community must look beyond the law, to non-traditional, informal influences operating alongside the law, in order to move towards the goal of effective enforcement of the law prohibiting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Based on Constructivist thinking, four key strategies - departures from traditional Positivist-Realist conceptions of the international legal system - are suggested as focal points for enhancing compliance with the laws in this area, these being: active differentiation between the target subjects of the law; utilization of the dual power of international humanitarian law; employing social norms and ethical values as motivations for compliance with the law; and embracing the informal compliance-inducing activities and powers of non-state actors. Applying these strategies to the humanitarian law enforcement project, a reversal of traditional perceptions of the influence of ethics and law in relation to individual and State target subjects respectively, is proposed as a future direction for enhancing compliance and furthering the prevention project in relation to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

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It is generally agreed that a criminal justice system reflects the values of the society within which it exists. The presence of patriarchal social values will likely affect the response of the criminal justice system to intimate violence. While the perpetration of violence against another is a violation of an important social norm, patriarchal values may function to discount the seriousness of such an act, if the violence is perpetrated by a man against his girlfriend or wife. This discount of seriousness may lead to less severe punishment for men who assault their intimates than to men who assault nonintimates. The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that men who are convicted of committing serious assaults against female intimates receive more lenient punishment than men who are convicted of committing serious assault against nonintimates. Punishment was defined as sentencing outcomes, i. e. type and length of sentence. The sentences of offenders convicted of felony assaults as the major offense and subject to sentencing guidelines in Oregon in 1993 were examined. Chi-square tests were used to compare the sentence types of intimate and nonintimate violence offenders. Two-tailed !-tests and multiple linear regression were used to examine the relationship between victim-offender relationship and length of sentence. It appears that the presence of Oregon's sentencing guidelines, rather than victim-offender relationship, had the greatest effect upon the severity of punishment. This finding suggests that the guidelines may be responsible for minimizing the impact of patriarchal values on sentencing decisions in serious assault cases.

"Although the concept of human rights is not new, it has never attracted more attention than today. However, contrary to the tremendous growth of concern for the international protection of human rights, Rwanda was visited by three main deplorable waves of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Therefore, while the study is based on the premise that the primary duty of preventing these international crimes lies with the state, it will be argued that the secondary duty lies with international organisations like the UN and the AU. Both organisations could have averted or minimised the atrocities that occurred in Rwanda. Accordingly the study aims to address four issues. First, it attempts to review the weaknesses of the UN and OAU in their human rights monitoring and promotional fucntion derived from international human rights instruments. Second, it seeks to investigate the shortcomings and the failures of these two organisations in intervening to stop the Rwandan genocide. Third, it attempts to examine the UN's and AU's current handling of the cases of genocide as a preventive mechanism against gross human rights violations in Rwanda. Finally, the study will attempt to see if the failures seen in Rwanda are reflected in the current responses of the UN and the AU. The study presupposes that the 1994 Rwandan genocide, although not altogether inevitable, would not have been so comprehensive had the UN and the OAU/AU not developed a culture of impunity in the genocide of 1963 and 1973. One way assume, too, that the suffering could even have been minimized had there been active measures taken by these two organisations. This thesis proceeds on the premise of a problem that the vacuum that still exists under the Rwandan situation, both pre- and post-1994 genocide, as well as the weakness of the response from the UN and AU, is also abetting the current genocide in Sudan and countries with a volatile situation, like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/llm1.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"It is an accepted norm of international law that sitting heads of state have immunity from criminal prosecutions. A head of state is normally entitled to immunity from prosecution anywhere, even after he or she is no longer the head of state. However, in recent years we have witnessed the dramatic shift from this customary international law principle where some jurisdictions have been arresting, or threatening to arrest, former and sitting heads of state in order to institute criminal prosecutions against them. There is, however, no uniformity in the application of this action. Those jurisdictions that determine who is to be arrested or prosecuted are so selective that not all those alleged to have committed these crimes are arrested or prosecuted. On the other hand, existing jurisprudence on this subject is not firm in its application. This problem, therefore, calls for harmonisation of the application of the principle of immunity for heads of state in order to make international law reflect the real consent of states. ... The study is divided into four chapters. Chapter one addresses the background on which the study is premised, outlines the statement of the problem, objectives and their significance and the literature review. Chapter two discusses the principle of immunity as developed by prominent international lawyers, courts decisions and other generally applied principles in international law. Chapter three takes the practical application of the principle of head of state immunity against criminal prosecution in interantional law. This involves an examination of the application of the principle from selected national jurisdictions and by the International Court of Justice. Chapter four concludes the discussion and provides for necessary recommendations on the way forward." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2004. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Henry Onoria at the Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

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In the decades after attaining independence from its colonial masters, Rwanda’s two principal ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, suffered worsening tensions which often resulted in the perpetration of atrocities. Peace agreements brokered by the international community did not ease these ethnic tensions. In April 1994, the ethnic crisis took a different dimension following the assassination of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. A full-blown genocide was committed by the Hutus who targeted their Tutsi and Hutu-moderates victims because of their ethnic identity and tolerant political views respectively. In a hundred days, about a million Tutsis and Hutu-moderates were massacred. Gross violations of human rights had been committed. The planning, preparation and execution of these atrocities were done by almost everyone within the Hutu majority: the leadership (both civilian and military), business men, the clergy, artists, professors, journalists, militias, the commoners, and other civil society actors. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of General Paul Kagame overthrew the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) and brought the genocide to an end. In an effort to build a government of national unity, the Government of Rwanda under the leadership of President Paul Kagame requested the United Nations Security Council to establish a tribunal for the trial of persons who bear responsibility for the atrocities committed in Rwanda. In response to this request, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 955 (8 November 1994) creating the second United Nations’ ad hoc international criminal tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Annexed to Resolution 955 was the Statute of the ICTR. The Statute gave the Tribunal jurisdiction over three crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II. Amongst other things, it also defined on which individuals it would impose criminal responsibility. The definition of genocide and the punishable acts as contained in the Statute of the ICTR (Article 2) were simply imported from the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948 (Article III). One of these punishable acts is direct and public incitement to commit genocide (Article 2(3)(c) of the Statute of the ICTR). As seen in Article 6(1) of the Statute of the ICTR, there are five different modes of participation that would lead to the imposition of criminal responsibility: planning, instigating, ordering, committing or otherwise aiding and abetting. Instigation is one of these modes of participation. An examination of the jurisprudence of both the Trial and Appeal Chambers of the ICTR reveals that there is an overlap between direct and public incitement to commit genocide under Article 2(3)(c) and instigation as a mode of participation under Article 6(1). The Trial and Appeal Chambers have contributed enormously to the development of the jurisprudence of direct and public incitement to commit genocide under Article 2(3)(c). Now settled as an inchoate crime in international criminal law, criminal responsibility is imposed irrespective of whether the direct and public incitement successfully results in the commission of genocide. On the other hand, instigation is one of the modes of participation which would lead to the imposition of criminal responsibility. Participation under Article 6(1) is not limited to any particular crime, but extends to all the crimes over which the ICTR has jurisdiction – genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II. The jurisprudence of the Trial and Appeal Chambers on Article 6(1) states that criminal responsibility can only be imposed where it is proved that the accused’s mode of participation substantially contributed to the commission of the crime. Therefore, instigation, which is one of the modes of participation, must be shown to have substantially contributed to the commission of the crime for criminal responsibility to be imposed. In my opinion, this requirement of substantial contribution for the imposition of criminal responsibility is wrong. It emanates from a poor understanding of Article 6(1) and the construction of the words therein. It is a judicial invention which does not square with established principles of criminal responsibility in general and inchoate crimes in particular. This thesis critiques the jurisprudence of the ICTR on instigation as a mode of participation under Article 6(1). Instigation is a recognised mode of participation in international crimes. Under the common law system, it is also an inchoate crime. International instruments and the jurisprudence of the Trial and Appeal Chambers have recognised the inchoate nature of incitement. However, in the construction of Article 6(1) wherein instigation features as a mode of participation, the Trial and Appeal Chambers erred. I illustrate in this thesis that a correct construction and understanding of Article 6(1) shows its inchoate and bifurcated character: first, any of the modes of participation must lead to any of the stages of any of the crimes (planning, preparation or execution). These modes of participation are not limited to any particular crime. Therefore, if instigation leads to the planning or preparation of any of the crimes, that renders it inchoate (which is understood to mean a criminal activity that is incomplete, still at its initial stage). Second, the imposition of criminal responsibility is bifurcated. In other words, it must go through two stages: first, there must be a mode of participation, and second, it must lead to any of the stages of the crimes. Third, the substantial contribution requirement does not square with a strict construction of Article 6(1). In articulating the different stages that a mode of participation must lead to, it states ‘planning, preparation or execution’ of any of the crimes. The use of a disjunctive word ‘or’ rather than a conjunctive word ‘and’ suggests that any of the modes of participation that leads to any of these stages (planning, preparation or execution) of any of these crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions and of Additional Protocol II) would suffice. Therefore, to require that there must be a substantial contribution to commission of a crime before criminal responsibility can be imposed under Article 6(1) is a clear limitation to the last stage of the crime, which is execution (or commission). As evidenced by the cases tried at the Tribunal, Article 2(3)(c) which addresses the inchoate crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide and Article 6(1) which deals with the imposition of criminal responsibility, do overlap. In other words, incitement that qualifies as direct and public incitement to commit genocide under Article 2(3)(c) may as well qualify as instigation to any of the crimes over which the ICTR has jurisdiction under Article 6(1). From the delivery of its first judgment in the case of The Prosecutor v Jean-Paul Akayesu,1 the Trial Chambers did not recognise the confluence 1 Judgment, Case No. ICTR-96-4. T. Ch. I, 2 September 1998. between these two Articles. However, in the case of The Prosecutor v Callixte Kalimanzira,2 the Trial Chambers made this observation, and outlined a set of guidelines on how to resolve cases of overlap. Though a colossal step in fixing this problem, the guidelines are faulted because they repeat the same mistakes made by previous Trial Chambers: first, they limit instigation only to genocide even under Article 6(1); second, they still hold that criminal responsibility can be imposed under Article 6(1) only when it is proved that the mode of participation substantially contributed to the commission of the crime. While it resonates with conventional wisdom today that incitement, synonymous with instigation, is limited to the crime of genocide, this thesis critiques the jurisprudence of both the Trial and Appeal Chambers of the ICTR and argues that instigation is a mode of participation in crimes against humanity following a strict construction of Article 6(1). Furthermore, incitement that qualifies as ‘direct and public incitement’ to commit genocide under Article 2(3)(c) may also qualify as instigation to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, or both under Article 6(1). Third, ‘direct and public incitement’ to commit genocide under Article 2(3)(c) is limited to the crime of genocide, and must fulfil the caveats of ‘direct’ and ‘public’. Meanwhile, instigation under Article 6(1) does not need to meet any requirement as long as it leads to the ‘planning, preparation or execution’ of any of the crimes over which the ICTR has jurisdiction. The poor construction of Article 6(1) has resulted in huge controversies about instigation as a mode of participation in crimes over which the ICTR has jurisdiction under Article 6(1). More specifically, instigation, which is one of the modes, overlaps with the wording of Article 2(3)(c) which deals with the inchoate crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The substantial contribution requirement is a judicial invention which does not align squarely with established principles of criminal responsibility for inchoate crimes. It is the unfortunate outcome of a poor construction of Article 6(1) and has orchestrated a confused understanding of instigation as a mode of participation. It has blurred and obfuscated instigation as a mode of participation in crimes against humanity; stagnated the evolution of the jurisprudence on instigation to 2 Judgment, Case No. ICTR-05-88-T, T. Ch. III, 22 June 2009. commit crimes against humanity; and above all, propelled international criminal law on an ambitious and controversial mission from which it must retreat

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