Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

The project entitled "New Approaches in International Criminal Justice" will focus on the new models and forms of supranational prosecution of serious international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes) in post-conflict situations as recently developed and implemented by the international community in addition to the direct establishment of international criminal tribunals by the UN Security Council on the basis of chapter VII of the UN Charter (International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda). These new approaches provide for prosecution either within the framework of a UN Transitional Administration (Kosovo & East Timor) or on the basis of a bilateral agreement between the UN and the affected State (Sierra Leone & Cambodia).

The project, product of various conversations between the Office of the Prosecutor General of UNTAET in East Timor and the Max Planck Institute, will further explore these new models in international criminal justice by examining the situation in the countries affected by means of an interdisciplinary and two-tiered approach: "background papers" will explain the historical and political context of the conflict; "legal papers" will analyse the legal framework established to prosecute the international crimes committed in the countries examined. While the background papers (approx. 15 pp.) should be written by persons with expertise in the social sciences and/or criminology, the legal papers (approx. 20 pp.) should be prepared by international criminal lawyers, preferably lawyers who participated in the negotiations that lead to the adoption of the model of prosecution being analysed.