The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals: Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice

This book examines how international criminal institutions and their actors construct witness identity and memory, using the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as a case study. It challenges the notion that international criminal courts and tribunals can produce a collective memory of atrocities and argues that witnessing must be understood as a contingent and multi-layered discursive process.

Format: Hardback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 05 October 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This book delves into the intricate mechanisms employed by international criminal institutions and their actors, including legal counsel, judges, investigators, and registrars, to shape witness identity and memory. By addressing a significant gap within transitional justice scholarship, this conceptually driven and empirically grounded interdisciplinary study takes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as a case study. It poses a crucial question: How do legal witnesses of human rights violations contribute to memory production in transitional post-conflict societies?

Witnessing at tribunals involves individuals externalizing memories of violations, which is often perceived within transitional justice legal scholarship as an opportunity to ensure these memories are recorded in historical records. However, this prevailing understanding of witness testimony fails to grasp the complex nature of memory. Memory construction involves the amalgamation of individual and collective memories within a contested and context-dependent framework of the past. Consequently, the book challenges the notion that international criminal courts and tribunals can establish a collective memory of atrocities, arguing that witnessing must be understood as a contingent and multifaceted discursive process.

Contributing to the specific analysis of witnessing and memory, as well as to the broader field of transitional justice, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in these areas, as well as those in legal theory, global criminology, memory studies, international relations, and international human rights.

Weight: 484g
Dimension: 161 x 241 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032052809