A report by Eric Loefflad on a talk by Dr Nesam McMillan of the University of Melbourne for the Kent Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL)
Visiting speaker Dr Nesam McMillan from the University of Melbourne delivered an illuminating talk on Tuesday 10 October as part of the Kent Centre for Critical International Law’s calendar of events for 2017/18. While much work has been done on the doctrinal and institutional aspects of international criminal justice, Nesam’s lecture, entitled ‘The Ideal of International Criminal Justice: Subjectivity, Geography, Ethics,’ focused on the comparatively neglected criminological aspect of this broader project. In framing this presentation, Nesam invited us to think about international criminal justice in light of its stated goals of addressing mass harm. Here it was asserted that international criminal justice as enterprise attempting to construct an ideal view of cosmopolitan justice problematically distances itself from the actual lived experiences of the victims this enterprise claims to be acting in the name of.
In illustrating this point, Nesam discussed the way the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) deliberate attempt to physically position itself as something above and beyond the system of sovereign states that forms the international order. Thus, while the ICC’s headquarters are located in The Hague, Netherlands it functions outside the jurisdiction of the Dutch state, maintains a highly internationalised staff, and, as opposed to Dutch, carries out its correspondence in the Court’s official languages of English and French. This self-styled universality stands in stark contrast to the Court’s portrayal of the predominantly African locations that make up the overwhelming majority of ICC interventions. Here the ICC’s presentation of itself as a ‘universal’ entity acting in the name of all mankind is contrasted against various African localities as spaces of the ‘particular.’
It is through this analysis that Nesam draws a parallel between the modern enterprise of international criminal justice and ongoing legacies of colonialism in international law. After all, colonialism was justified by reference to a universal standard of ‘civilisation’ that had to be affirmed by any society that hoped to join the ‘family of nations.’ By justifying itself in such universal terms in contrast to particularities of the locations it applies its standards to, the international criminal justice projects acts as a vessel for the ethos of ‘civilisation’ even after the end of formal imperialism. While Nesam is clear that this problematic aspect of actually-existing international criminal justice should in no way detract from very real questions of suffering and atrocity, confronting the reproduction of colonial logics must form an essential part of any effort to address mass harm through invocations of international law.
More information about CeCIL events is available on their website.