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Patryk's first book ‘International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability: In the Court's Shadow' (Oxford University Press) was published in 2023. His work has featured in the Leiden Journal of International Law, the Yale Journal of International Law, the European Journal of International Law and the Journal of International Criminal Justice. Patryk is a regular contributor to TV, radio and podcasts. He holds a PhD from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
International criminal justice is still reflexively associated with high-profile international cases, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin. However, whether it be in Ukraine, Colombia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, national courts now prosecute far more suspects for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Not only does the ICC play a backup role in these and many other countries, its track record of just a handful of convictions over a twenty year period stands in stark contrast to the former tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which prosecuted hundreds of cases in the same amount of time. How did domestic accountability come to eclipse the dream of international criminal tribunals? And what are the effects of this shift from international to domestic trials for the global fight against impunity?
To answer these questions, my book examines the causes, rationales and consequences of what I call the complementarity turn – a paradigm shift toward national trials as the ultima ratio or end goal of international criminal justice. While domestic justice is now celebrated as superior to proceedings in The Hague and international prosecutors and judges use the principle of complementarity to foster cooperation with government actors, I argue that too much deference by international civil servants toward states reduces the likelihood of accountability and may enable national elites to consolidate authoritarian power. Drawing on research and interviews in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, the book develops a tripartite framework to analyse how states and tribunals work with or despite one another, and advocates more dynamic interactions between international and domestic stakeholders to strengthen the enforcement of international criminal law.
Anticipating the ongoing debates over the interplay of domestic, international and hybrid trials in Ukraine, the book is also an appeal to reflect more critically on the field's new conventional wisdom that ‘the future of international criminal justice is domestic’, while underscoring the need for further research on the merits and drawbacks of both international and national accountability initiatives
Patryk I. Labuda is Fellow of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Legal studies, having been previously an Assistant Professor of (International) Criminal Law at the University of Amsterdam and a Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the New York University School of Law, the Fletcher School of Law of Diplomacy, and the University of Zurich. A former practitioner with experience in central and north Africa, Patryk draws on interdisciplinary methods to study how international institutions interpret legal norms to achieve public policy aims. He specialises in international (criminal) law, human rights, and peace and security studies. Patryk has 14 years of work and research experience in Africa, with a regional focus on the law, politics, and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan. His current research focuses on the cross-regional fallout from the Russo-Ukraine war, with an emphasis on global governance and relations between the 'Global South' and the 'Global East', in particular Eastern Europe and Africa.
- Speaker
- Patryk I. Labuda
- Hosted by
- School of Law
- Venue
- Hybrid Event