Hintjens, Helen --- "The creation of the ICTR" [2016] ELECD 1511; in de Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Smeulers, Alette (eds), "The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 15

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Editor(s): de Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Smeulers, Alette

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784711696

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: The creation of the ICTR

Author(s): Hintjens, Helen

Number of pages: 29

Abstract/Description:

This chapter tries to place the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) back into the context of the period in which it was created, in the immediate aftermath of a major genocide, a genocide which the Western powers, the United Nations (UN) and the international community ignored until it was too late. This allowed the gruesome ‘work’ of killing to be done, so that most of the Tutsi population – and some of their Hutu and Twa defenders – were eliminated. As Uvin and Mironko put it, creating the ICTR: ‘was necessary in the light of the total inaction of [the international] […] community during the genocide, which was widely perceived as shameful’. The need to create the ICTR reflected the absence post-Nuremberg and post-Tokyo of any permanent international court able to hold individuals accountable for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. According to Hassan B. Jallow, Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR from 2003: ‘While Nuremberg constitutes a watershed in the evolution of international law with its establishment of the fundamental principle of individual criminal responsibility under international law, it has not left much else by way of precedent for the subsequent international criminal tribunals’.