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Criminal punishment is increasingly regarded as a necessary element of human rights protection. There is a growing conviction at the international level that those responsible for the most serious crimes should not go unpunished. Though there is a wealth of legal writing on international criminal law, the question why and to what extent criminal prosecution is a necessary means of human rights protection has hardly been addressed comprehensively. This book examines the duty to prosecute serious human rights violations. It does so by exploring the concepts of impunity and amnesties, and by exposing flaws in criminal proceedings. With its survey of the relevant human rights instruments and jurisprudence, the subject of this book is placed at the interface of international criminal law and international human rights. The book analyses the rapidly growing body of human rights case law, dealing with criminalization, prosecution, and punishment of serious human rights violations. It identifies and critically examines the standards for the conduct of criminal proceedings developed by the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. As the analysis reveals shortcomings in the current conceptualization of the prosecution of human rights violations, the book develops a solid theoretical framework for future jurisprudence. By evaluating the relationship between criminal law and the protection of human rights, the book elucidates not only the potential but also the limits of the role human rights law can play in the emerging concept of international criminal justice. The underlying rationale for prosecuting serious human rights violations is also relevant for post-conflict situations, in which it is often argued that criminal punishment threatens peace and reconciliation. The question how to deal with post-conflict justice under international law is a continuing theme throughout the book.

This book examines the most controversial war crimes trial of the modern era and its contested legacy for the growing fields of international criminal law and post-conflict justice. The international trial of Slobodan Milošević, who presided over the violent collapse of Yugoslavia, was already among the longest war crimes trials when Milošević died in 2006. Yet precisely because it ended without judgment, its significance and legacy are specially contested. The chapters here examine the meaning of the trial's termination and its implications for post-conflict justice. The book's approach is intensively cross-disciplinary, weighing the implications for law, politics, and society that modern war crimes trials create.

Foreign investors often sustain injuries during violent situations, such as riots, revolutions, civil wars, and international armed conflicts. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how effective investment treaty protections are in volatile times, how they relate to other applicable legal frameworks, and how they affect the state security policy and the post-conflict transition to peace. This book explores how foreign investment is protected in times of armed conflict under the investment treaty regime. It does so by combining insights from different areas of international law, including international investment law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, the law of state responsibility, and the law of treaties. While the protections have evolved over time, with the investment treaty regime providing the strongest legal framework for protecting investors yet, there has been an apparent shift towards safeguarding a state’s security interests in recent treaty practice. The book identifies and analyses the flaws in the existent normative framework, but also highlights the potential that investment treaties have for minimizing the devastating effects of armed conflict. It offers an analytical framework for assessing the investment treaty regime in times of armed conflict, distinguishing between different paradigms and different types conflicts. It argues that a new approach is needed to appropriately balance the competing interests of host states and investors when it comes to investment protection in armed conflicts.