Between the Scylla and Charybdis of Prosecution and Reconciliation: the Khmer Rouge Trials and the Promise of International Criminal Justice

The issue of “justice versus peace” has long been at the center of the controversy on international prosecutions for crimes in transitional and post-conflict societies. Opponents of international prosecutions have taken umbrage at the presumption that justice can only be rendered through criminal prosecutions by an international tribunal often far removed from local realities and voiced their concern about the destabilizing effects such prosecutions can have on local peace building initiatives that often provide amnesties for participants in mass atrocities. International criminal lawyers have answered these charges by arguing for a more holistic concept of peace in which justice is a prerequisite for a stable society based on the rule of law and prevention of impunity, and put forward holding individuals criminally responsible in a fair and impartial setting as one of the best methods for achieving this objective. Thus far, this heated debate has rarely progressed beyond the hallowed corridors of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”): there is a rich and growing scholarship exploring the tension between the ICC and alternative justice mechanisms, particularly amnesties and traditional justice practices. The bulk of this literature however, lavishes its attention on the ICC as the prima donna of