Victor Peskin

International justice and domestic politics: post-Tudjman Croatia and the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

NO ISSUE HAS POLARISED the post-authoritarian Croatian political scene as much as the issue of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Although the pro-Western regime that came to power in January 2000 promised to reverse the anti-ICTY policies of its nationalist and authoritarian predecessor, it soon became clear that such cooperation was easier promised than delivered. Domestic political battles over whether and how much to cooperate with the United Nations tribunal based in The Hague have been intense, often dominating the media and at times sparking street demonstrations. The viability of Croatia’s governing coalition and the fledgling party system have been tested frequently on the tribunal issue. Within the ruling coalition, unity has given way to internecine conflict over the terms of government policy toward the tribunal. This article aims to shed light on the politics of state cooperation with the ICTY by addressing the factors that have made the issue so volatile in Croatia. A fundamental premise of this article is that one cannot understand the process of international justice without examining the domestic politics surrounding state cooperation. The United Nations ad hoc criminal tribunals are highly dependent on domestic political dynamics to fulfil their mandates to prosecute violations of international humanitarian law. International justice cannot be achieved without domestic cooperation because the tribunals lack enforcement powers to compel state compliance with court orders. The issue of cooperation—and the challenges it poses to stability and democratisation in the former Yugoslavia and to the ICTY’s struggle for institutional survival—will continue to be volatile as long as the tribunal exists. The strong domestic resistance to cooperation in the Balkans underlines the challenge confronting both the ad hoc tribunals and the permanent International Criminal Court: how to institutionalise a system of international tribunals in which neither the winners nor the losers are immune from standing trial for atrocities committed during battle. In this article we argue that nationalist groups in Croatia have raised the political costs of cooperation with the ICTY by effectively designing a rhetorical strategy which equates the tribunal’s indictments against Croatia’s war heroes with attacks on the dignity and legitimacy of the so-called Homeland War (domovinski rat) fought on

Caution and Confrontation in the International Criminal Court's Pursuit of Accountability in Uganda and Sudan

This article addresses the unfolding pursuit of state cooperation by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It explains that the prosecutor’s recent shift from a cautionary to a confrontational pursuit is due to 1) the failure to persuade states to hand over suspects and 2) the lack of international backing for arrests amid the quest for a negotiated peace to ongoing conflicts. The article focuses on the prosecutor’s forceful campaign to apprehend rebel leaders from Uganda and government suspects implicated in atrocities in Darfur, including President Bashir of Sudan.

The International Criminal Court, the Security Council, and the Politics of Impunity in Darfur

This article analyzes the political challenges confronting the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its efforts to bring war crimes suspects to trial in connection with mass atrocities committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. It chronicles and examines the battles over cooperation between the ICC and the defiant Sudanese government that have forestalled the handover of suspects such as Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. It also seeks to explain why the Security Council, in its ambivalence toward the ICC, has not vigorously pressed Sudan to fulfill its legal obligation to cooperate.