What's Next for International Justice?

Big brains are gathered in New York City to discuss the future of international justice -- and, namely, how to make it more effective. Convened by Harvard's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, the meeting of international justice big-wigs will discuss "mutually reinforcing strategies" for strengthening global accountability mechanisms.

But Mutually Reinforcing Strategies are not easy to come by, and international justice, still a nascent movement, is fraught with more complications than it usually deserves. What may seem like a fairly straightforward concept -- kill a bunch of people and you will be punished -- gets caught up in the giant chess board of international relations, in which the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity become an expendable pawn in global power plays.

Purveyors of justice themselves seem to do best when keeping such political dynamics at arms length, but experience has shown that this is only possible to a certain extent. Still, the war crimes prosecutor-as-hero (self-) image displayed by the public comments and actions (and documentary films) of the current Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court are a distraction from the true service that international justice can provide to conflict-ridden societies. The movement does not need to resort to platitudes and personality cults in order to justify its work to the world.

So best of luck to the participants of the Consultative Conference on International Criminal Justice -- a brief conference agenda and participant list is available online, and although conference materials have not been made public, the Hauser Center is working to generate public awareness of the event via its Twitter and Facebook pages.

[Photo from Flickr user  humbleslave,  under a Creative Commons license.]