Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: International prosecution of war crimes, such as in the cases of Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, negotiate an uncomfortable tension in the focus on individual responsibility for what are, in effect, large-scale acts of violence implicating many. This paper looks at how the international war crimes tribunal for Rwanda shapes a particular conception of individual responsibility against the back-drop of mass atrocity. I take as my starting point an understanding of war crimes prosecutions as identity constructing spaces in which the responsible Western self emerges against a criminal and racialized alterity. The Tribunals, I argue, are legal arenas in which claims to community, identity and the civilizing possibility of law are performed. Focusing on one particular decision of the Rwanda Tribunal – the ‘media’ case – this paper considers how dominant explanations of individual guilt and collective behaviour serve to shape an understanding of international ‘criminality’ and the ordering function of international war crimes prosecutions.