Original version
Genocide and Victimology. 2020, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429458675
Abstract
By their ability to ‘shock the conscience of humanity’, core international crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide – are instilled with a ‘higher’ victim profile than what is generally the case in domestic criminal justice. While the permanent International Criminal Court – as an embodiment of the international community – have been delegated the authority to punish on behalf of its member states, this chapter moves beyond such a politico-legal approach to offer a cultural insight into the ‘global’ authority to punish, asking, who are the ‘we’ who punish? Drawing on empirical research from the author’s study of human rights advocacy at the ICC and conceptual work that is the legacy of Emile Durkheim, the chapter explores how the notion of ‘humanity’ is put at the centre of international criminal justice’s moral foundation, and does work to justify criminal punishment when it is disembedded from the nation state. As such, the chapter suggests that international criminal justice serves, in the name of humanity, to reinforce a cosmopolitan imaginary of a global moral order, albeit one that is, in its current manifestation, biased, selective and situated.