Magister Legum - LLM / This paper is about the reparations regime of the International Criminal Court and reparations possibilities for victims of sexual violence. It will contain a legal analysis of the reparations system of the Court, including the Trust Fund for Victims of the International Criminal Court. In a second step, the needs of women who experienced conflict related violence will be examined. The central question, which this paper will try to answer, is whether the ICC reparations regime has the ability to provide gender-sensitive reparations and thus make a contribution to the improvement of women’s lives in post-conflict societies. / South Africa

Magister Legum - LLM / Hybrid Courts are the latest innovation in the prosecution of international crimes after the era of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Examples include; the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the Regulation 64 Panels in the courts of Kosovo and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The hybrid court model at its inception was believed to be the panacea for the short comings of purely international tribunals. The characteristic location of the tribunals in the locus of the atrocities and the participation of local judicial officers alongside their international counterparts was expected to promote legitimacy and foster capacity building for conflict ravaged transitional states. Despite the criticisms of the model today, a new hybrid court has recently been inaugurated to prosecute Hissène Habré the former President of Chad, for international crimes committed during his presidency. The promulgation of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Senegal suggests that the model continues to be useful, especially for Africa. This is of particular significance since international criminal justice has lately come under attack on the continent. The on-going feud between the African Union and the International Criminal court is only the most prolific example of this. This research paper explores the dimensions of the challenges facing the legitimacy of international criminal justice in Africa and the extent to which the hybrid court model can provide a solution for them. In order to do so, the study begins by addressing the meaning of legitimacy within the African context. A general discussion of hybrid tribunals, as well as the specific manifestations of the model in Africa so far, follows. The Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Courts of Senegal are distinguishable from each other in structure and are thus juxtaposed in order to illuminate possible improvements on the hybrid court model for the future.

Doctor Legum - LLD / It is rare in law and in other disciplines for a word or a phrase to appear to mean what it does not. This is, however, true when it comes to life imprisonment or life sentence. I Unlike sentences like the death penalty, there have been instances where even those who are expected to know the meaning of the sentence of life imprisonment have misunderstood it.2 This misunderstanding is compounded by the fact that even dictionaries that have always helped us to understand the meaning of the words are of little help when it comes to the definition of life imprisonment. The Oxford Advanced Leamer's Dictionary, for example, defines life sentence to mean 'the punishment by which [some body] spends the rest of their life in prison." It goes ahead to define a 'lifer' as 'a person who has been sent to The ambiguity of life imprisonment could partly explain why the campaign prison for their whole life. The ambiguity of life imprisonment could partly explain why the campaign to abolish the death penalty and substitute it with life imprisonment has option to choose between the death penalty and life-imprisonment, many been successful in many parts of the world. When people are given the option to choose between the death penalty and life-imprisonment, many would oppose the former and favour the latter for various reasons. This is because, inter alia, many people think that an offender sentenced to life imprisonment will be detained for the rest of his natural life. This is of course not true in some cases, and, as Lord Mustil held, The two tribunals that were established after the World War III, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Tokyo Tribunal, were empowered to impose the death penalty and indeed, as will be discussed later in detail, some offenders were sentenced to death." Although these tribunals were not expressly empowered to 2 sentence offenders to life imprisonment, they did sentence some of the offenders to life imprisonment. However, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) all have jurisdiction to sentence offenders to life imprisonment. At the time of writing, the ICC had not completed any case and therefore had no jurisprudence on life imprisonment." The ICTR has sentenced more offenders to life imprisonment and imprisonment for the remainder of their lives than the ICTY. This thesis reviews cases on life imprisonment in international criminal tribunals in order to examine the theories of punishment that these tribunals considered in sentencing offenders to life imprisonment. There are cases where the ICTR has sentenced offenders to imprisonment for the rest of their natural lives. From a human rights perspective the thesis argues that imprisonment for the remainder of the offender's natural life is inhuman punishment. The statutes of the ICTY, ICTR and ICC provide for circumstances where an offender sentenced by any of those tribunals could be released before the completion of his or her sentence. It is on that basis that it is argued that even offenders sentenced to 3 imprisonment for the remainder of their lives by the ICTR could be released.

The thesis focuses on analysis of causes of armed conflicts within security complex of the African Great Lakes region. Explored period is situated between 1990 and present. The major part of text is devoted concrete analysis of causes of conflicts according to sector approach. The thesis attempts to describe main causal frameworks of conflicts within researched area eventually to find some their common features.

The aim of this Master thesis is to identify the specifics of non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) as an actor of international relations, mainly through the presentation and activities of the organization during the implementation of its programs in the early 1990s, when the process of internationalization was consolidated. The thesis also covers the issue of respecting the commitment to shared values for which Doctors Without Borders claim responsibility, and which also represents the principles of their activities. Based on the theoretical framework of actorness, it is possible to compare three missions of Doctors Without Borders implemented during the internal state conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis shows that during this period, Doctors Without Borders is characterized by a strong national identity of particular sections, in that we can see the strong national features of the French, Belgian and Dutch sections, which often behaved contradictorily and incoherently. The commitment to respect the shared values is fulfilled with one exception, namely the obligation to respect the neutral status.

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Soziale, politische und geografische Prozesse der Stadtentwicklung in Konflikt- und Grenzregionen werden in dieser Dissertation durch eine Kombination von Satellitenbildern und Feldforschung analysiert. Das Untersuchungsgebiet ist die Grenzregion zwischen der Demokratischen Republik Kongo (DRK) und Ruanda, die seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre von zwischen- und innerstaatlichen bewaffneten Konflikten betroffen ist. Im Fokus der Analyse liegt Goma, die Provinzhauptstadt von Nord-Kivu im Osten der DRK. Zusätzlich wird ein Vergleich mit Gomas Zwillingsstadt Gisenyi in Ruandas Westprovinz gezogen. Die Literatur zu urbanen Räumen im Kongo und in gesamt Subsahara-Afrika bezieht sich häufig auf Primärstädte. Über die Entwicklung von Sekundärstädten in Konfliktzonen, für die es kaum räumlich explizite Studien gibt, ist wenig bekannt. Diese Arbeit bietet zwei sich ergänzende Perspektiven durch die Kombination von Satellitenbildanalyse mit semi-strukturierten Interviews und Beobachtungen aus mehreren Forschungsaufenthalten. Das zweite Kapitel verwendet eine Zeitreihe hochaufgelöster Landsat-Szenen, um die Expansion von Goma zwischen 1986 und 2015 zu analysieren. Dieser Zeitrahmen umfasst internen Konflikt in Ruanda (1990-1994), die Kongo-Kriege (1996-2003) und deren von Gewalt geprägte Folgezeit. Das dritte Kapitel basiert auf der Analyse sehr hochauflösender Satellitenbilder. Eine feinskalige Kartierung von Urbanisierungsmustern zwischen 2005 und 2014 wird mit verantwortlichen Akteursgruppen verbunden. Das vierte Kapitel erweitert die Analyse auf Gomas ruandische Nachbarstadt Gisenyi. Es untersucht und vergleicht, wie sich zwischen- und innerstaatliche Konflikte und die jüngste Phase von Stabilität in Ruanda auf die räumliche Stadtentwicklung über die nationale Grenze hinweg auswirken. Die Arbeit schließt mit einer kritischen Reflexion über Nutzen und Grenzen des angewendeten Methodenmix und zeigt mögliche Bereiche für weitere Forschung auf. / This dissertation combines satellite imagery analysis and field research to investigate the influence of armed conflict on urban spatial development in the eastern periphery of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and western Rwanda. This border region continues to be affected by inter- and intra-state conflict since the early 1990s. The primary study area is the city of Goma in Congo's North Kivu province. Additionally, a comparison is drawn to the adjacent city of Gisenyi in Rwanda's Western Province. The literature on urban areas in Congo and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa often refers to large primary cities. Little is known about urban development of secondary cities in conflict zones, and spatially explicit studies are rare. By combining satellite imagery analysis with semi-structured interviews and observations from field visits, this dissertation provides two complementary perspectives. The second chapter uses a time series of high-resolution Landsat images to analyze Goma's expansion between 1986 and 2015, a timeframe that includes conflict in Rwanda (1990-1994), the Congo Wars (1996-2003), and their violent aftermath. It shows how stages of urban growth relate to waves of forced displacement. The third chapter relies on very high-resolution (VHR) images for a fine-scale mapping of urbanization patterns between 2005 and 2014, and attributes them to groups of key actors. The fourth chapter extends the analysis to Goma’s Rwandan twin-city Gisenyi. It compares how inter- and intra-state conflict, and recent stability in Rwanda affect urban development across a national border. The dissertation concludes by reflecting on the utility and limitations of this methodological combination for conflict regions, highlighting areas for further research.

No description available.

Transitional Justice emerged as an exciting field three decades ago after the Nuremberg trials. Attempts to seek justice have been prolific and diverse in many countries including Syria. This research aims at revealing the factors that impact the transitional justice process in Syria by analyzing the first attempts at transitional justice in Syria. Therefore, this paper uses a case comparison of the first attempts at transitional justice in Syria and Rwanda and uses critical discourse analysis to do so. This paper recognizes four factors that made transitional justice successful in Rwanda when compared to Syria, namely: the absence of foreign powers, a decisive victory, the decentralization of justice, and the level of community involvement. This paper contributes to reducing the literature gap on transitional justice in Syria by proposing an analysis of the first signs of transitional justice.

[pt] Entre 06 de abril a 20 de julho de 1994, após a queda do avião que transportava, dentre outros passageiros, o então presidente de Ruanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, ocorreu um dos maiores genocídios da história contemporânea, o genocídio em Ruanda. De forma organizada e sistemática, estima-se que entre 800.000 a 1.000.000 pessoas, tutsis em especial, tenham sido exterminadas. Através da Resolução número 955/94, o Conselho de Segurança da ONU demonstrou preocupação com as graves violações do Direito Internacional Humanitário, ocorridas no território ruandês. Nesse sentido, foi criado o Tribunal Penal Internacional para Ruanda (TPIR), com mandato para apurar os crimes praticados durante o genocídio daquele país e punir os responsáveis por estes crimes. O presente estudo tem por objetivo verificar as contribuições do TPIR para o Direito Internacional Penal e a Justiça Penal Internacional. Verificou-se que o TPIR auxiliou na definição e elaboração de diversos conceitos sobre os crimes internacionais centrais previstos no Estatuto do TPIR e na Convenção de Genocídio de 1948. Ainda, produziu farta jurisprudência e grande corpus de direito material e processual, e efetuou a responsabilização dos grandes líderes do genocídio em questão. Desta forma, contribuiu para a evolução do Direito Internacional Penal e também para a criação de um Tribunal Penal Internacional Permanente. / [en] Between April 6 and July 20, 1994, after the plane crash carrying, among other passengers, the then president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, one of the greatest genocides in contemporary history took place, the genocide in Rwanda. In an organized and systematic way, it is estimated that between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people, Tutsis in particular, were exterminated. Through Resolution number 955/94, the UN Security Council expressed concern about the serious violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Rwanda. In this sense, the International Criminal Court of Rwanda (ICTR) was created, with a mandate to investigate the crimes committed during the genocide of that country and punish those responsible for these crimes. This study aims to verify the contributions of the ICTR to International Criminal Law and International Criminal Justice. It appears that the ICTR assisted in the definition and elaboration of several concepts on the central international crimes provided for in the ICTR Statute and in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Furthermore, it produced abundant jurisprudence and a large corpus of substantive and procedural law, and effected the accountability of the great leaders of the genocide in question. In this way, it contributed to the evolution of International Criminal Law and a creation of a permanent international criminal court.