Hybrid Justice: Innovation and Impact in the Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes

The last decade has seen the unexpected re-emergence of hybrid and internationalised courts - institutions which operate with varying combinations of national and international law, procedure, and staff. Whilst the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court should have made hybrid mechanisms largely obsolete, hybrids have recently been established or proposed for atrocity crimes committed in Chad, South Sudan, Israel/Palestine, the Central African Republic, Kosovo, Syria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, The Gambia, Liberia, and Ukraine.

Hybrid Justice critically examines the resurgent promise of hybrid courts. Focusing on the fields, practices, innovations, and of hybrid courts, the contributors evaluate hybrids’ success, and in doing so, help to clarify the conditions and mechanisms that makes hybrids likely to succeed in their mandates and impacts. The authors focus on hybrid courts and resilience: the resilience of hybrid mechanisms to withstand political and other pressures to deliver justice and accountability, and the potential contribution of hybrids to the resilience of affected communities.

Borne out of a collaboration between lawyers, academics, and activists, this edited volume provides a uniquely comparative account of the development of hybrid courts in recent years.

Kirsten Ainley, Professor, Coral Bell School of International Relations, Australian National University, Mark Kersten, Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of the Fraser Valley, University of the Fraser Valley

Kirsten Ainley is Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University and the Principal Investigator of the Hybrid Justice project. Her research focuses on international policy and practice in military, legal, and development-focused interventions, and the impacts of these interventions, with an increasing focus on their gendered impacts. She has published on international criminal law, transitional justice, and the International Criminal Court, and her current work traces funding streams for international courts and transitional justice programmes. She co-authored, with Mark Kersten, the Dakar Guidelines on the Establishment of Hybrid Courts, which develop good practice on setting up hybrid tribunals.

Mark Kersten is Assistant Professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada, and a Senior Consultant at the Wayamo Foundation in Berlin, Germany. Mark is the founder of the blog Justice in Conflict and author of the book, published by Oxford University Press, by the same name. His research on the pursuit of justice and accountability for mass atrocities, peace processes and conflict resolution has appeared in numerous academic fora as well as media publications such as Al Jazeera, BBC, Foreign Policy, Toronto Star, and The Washington Post.