International Guidelines Against Impunity: Facilitating Accountability

We strive to overcome impunity for international crimes and serious violations of human rights. Our reasons may include a vision of justice and perhaps a hope for deterrence. Notwithstanding our aspiration to establish a regime of accountability, impunity remains a recurrent pattern. Where an effort at accountability is undertaken at all, it consistently is approached through a second-best alternative to full and complete accountability—some form of partial accountability and, hence, partial impunity. This essay briefly examines the reasons for this consistent pattern of compromise, and then considers what contribution the development of International Guidelines Against Impunity for International Crimes (“Guidelines”) might make in moving toward a regime of consistent and meaningful accountability.