‘Nothing about us, without us, is for us’: victims and the international criminal justice system

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maxine Marcus is an International Crimes Prosecutor and Investigator. Her specialised expertise is in investigation and prosecution of core international crimes, in particular crimes involving conflict-related sexual violence. She has 10 years of field-based experience (Chad (for Darfur), Sierra Leone, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Ingushetia (for Chechnya), Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Guatemala and Guinea) and 12 years of courtroom litigation (Special Court for Sierra Leone and ICTY). Maxine is a legal and gender expert with the UN Commission of Inquiry for Guinea, OHCHR Fact Finding Mission for Sri Lanka, CAR Panel on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers, UK PSVI Protocol and Global Summit, and UN Focal Point on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. She is a faculty member of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations and Justice Rapid Response/UN Women; and Director of the Transitional Justice Clinic, providing mobile technical peer-to-peer support for national legal practitioners on cases involving grave crimes for prosecution in national courts.

Louise Chappell is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on gender justice issues across legal, political and social institutions. Louise has published widely in this field, and her most recent book is The Politics of Gender Justice: Legacies and Legitimacy at the International Criminal Court (Oxford University Press).

Andrea Durbach is a professor of Law and Director of the Australian Human Rights Centre (AHRCentre) at UNSW Sydney. She has held senior positions in the human rights field, including as Deputy Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner and as a consultant to the Australian Defence Abuse Response Taskforce to develop a framework to address the needs of Defence Force victims of gender-based violence and to prevent harmful conduct. Andrea has published widely on a range of human rights issues and gender justice, and is currently co-investigator on an Australian Research Council grant examining reparations for victims of sexual violence post-conflict. Between 2015 and 2017, Andrea led the AHRCentre’s major research project, Strengthening Australian University Responses to Sexual Assault and Harassment.

Notes

1 See Williams and Opdam, this special issue.

2 Pursuant to the Statute of the SCSL, one judge on each trial bench was Sierra Leonean, the Deputy Prosecutor was Sierra Leonean or appointed by the government, and the investigation and prosecution units were composed of integrated teams of Sierra Leoneans and internationals.

3 See Sperfeldt, this special issue.

4 The UN defines transitional justice as consisting ‘of both judicial and non-judicial processes and mechanisms, including prosecution initiatives, truth-seeking, reparations programmes, institutional reform or an appropriate combination thereof’. Guidance Note of the Secretary General: United Nations Approach to Transitional Justice’, March 2010, https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/TJ_Guidance_Note_March_2010FINAL.pdf (accessed July 20, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Projects funding scheme under [grant number DP140102274].