Pembroke College Cambridge

PKP Plenaries: Dr Sarah Nouwen

The way we define peace and justice has shaped conflicts and states throughout history, and continues to do so today. Conceptually tricky, unequivocally important, and the subjects of constant negotiation, peace and justice were excellent topics for the final PKP Plenary lecture of 2018.

Dr Nouwen is a Fellow at Pembroke College, a Cambridge University Senior Lecturer, and Co-Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. She works at the intersection of law and politics, war and peace and justice, and the rule of law. Her talk, “Crimes Against Humanity and the Search for Peace and Justice” was an in-depth discussion on the fundamental concepts of peace and justice, and the equally fundamental questions associated with them.

Dr Nouwen’s work has taken her to Uganda and Sudan, where her experiences interviewing people have shaped both her academic approach and her understanding of justice. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has intervened in both countries, causing huge controversy and spurring both critics and supporters to propose their own alternative forms of justice. Dr Nouwen spoke to communities in Uganda, for example, who prioritised the reco­­nstruction of relationships within communities over punishment of perpetrators of violence when it came to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  Other examples of alternative forms of justice included:

  • Justice as redistribution of power and wealth.
  • Justice as accountability and punishment. When people have lost security, homes, and years of education to conflict, detention in the Hague may not feel like a commensurate punishment.

None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive – most of us aspire to them all. But what is prioritised if resources are low and forms of justice clash? Peace and justice may clash, and people prioritise different things in different situations; when the bombs are falling, peace is the priority.

 Dr Nouwen therefore set out two fundamental questions to ask about justice: Who should have the final say when ideas of justice clash? And is it possible to determine now what form of justice should prevail in the future given the unique contexts in which crimes against humanity take place? These debates, she argued, are so fundamental that they are beyond governments, and beyond lawyers.

Such questions are currently playing out in a very pressing legal context. The ICC is proposing a new convention that obliges states to start criminal proceedings if crimes against humanity have been committed in their territory, or by people within their territory. This might seem like an obvious step, but an obligation to hold criminal proceedings could have difficult consequences where multiple ideas of justice clash.

Dr Nouwen illustrated this with the example of South Africa, where negotiated settlement was used to find a solution. When apartheid was made illegal it became so on the condition that it had been legal under South African law at the time. If this had not been the case a huge number of people could have been prosecuted at the international level; instead they incentivised people to disclose their actions in return for amnesty from punishment. This solution has been widely respected including by the UN, because it enabled South Africa to move forward.

Under the proposed convention such a solution would not be possible. The South African example is not perfect, but it shows that criminal prosecution is not always seen as the best path to peace and justice. Should criminal prosecution be required even if pursuing it risks further bloodshed? Dr Nouwen asked, could we have justice through accountability without punishment? She argued that the proposed convention would benefit from a provision to accommodate cases where prosecution is not in the interests of justice.

The 2018 plenary lectures touched on issues with the power to shape the lives of millions of people. Whether it is Brexit, reproductive technology, or international criminal law, these topics require informed, nuanced debate and awareness of social, political and cultural difference. There’s no one size fits all solution in any of these cases, but we can certainly learn from the past as we move into the future. 

Previous blogs on the Plenary lectures:

  1.  Lord Chris Smith on Brexit
  2.  Zeynep Gurtin on Assistive Reproductive Technologies

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