The Struggle for Global Justice

Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Robertson tells the dramatic story of how the human rights idea has come to dominate world politics, culminating in the decision to bomb Serbia for its crimes against humanity. Identifying a shift from diplomacy to law as the crucial post Cold War development, Robertson reveals what else we can expect from the demand for global justice. For centuries it seemed an impossible dream that international institutions could ever tell nation states how to treat their own citizens. The Holocaust and the Gulag called forth a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was universally ignored during the next four decades of Cold War. But after a century in which 160 million lives have been wasted in war, genocide and torture, the human rights movement is gathering popular and political strength, as evidenced by the land-mines treaty, the war-crimes trials for Bosnia and Rwanda, the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court, the arrest of General Pinochet, and the NATO attack on Serbian sovereignty to punish the “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo. Crimes Against Humanity is the first work to weave disparate strands of history, pilosophy, international law and politics into a comprehensible and engrossing account of this increasingly significant movement. Robertson reveals, with passion and precision, how human rights have located and penetrated the legal armor of the sovereign state, providing a justification for the international community - with or without the United Nations - to bring tyrants and torturers to heel. He explains how the crime against humanity, first defined at Nuremberg, has become the key which unlocks the closed door of state sovereignty, allowing political leaders to be held responsible for the evils they visit upon humankind.

Table of Contents Preface Introduction xiii xxiii 1 The Human Rights Story In the Beginning: Natural Rights Revolution and Declarations The Nineteenth Century: Bentham, Marx and the Humanitarian Impulse Between Wars: The League of Nations and Stalin's Show Trials H.G. Wells: What are we Fighting For? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights p. 1 2 The Post-War World 1946-76: Thirty Inglorious Years The Human Rights Commission: A Permanent Failure? The Civil Covenant and Its Human Rights Committee Some Enforcement at Last: The European Convention, and Other Regions Realpolitik Rules OK The Srebrenica Question p. 35 3 The Rights of Humankind Making Human Rights Rule: The International Law Paradox The Statute of Liberty Safety of the Person Individual Freedoms The Right to Fairness Peaceful Enjoyment of Property p. 80 4 Twenty-first Century Blues Freedom from Execution Death Penalty Safeguards Minority Rights Indigenous Peoples Self-Determination Economic and Social Rights A Right to Democracy? p. 124 5 War Law In Search of the Just War The Geneva Conventions Good Conevntions: Chemical, Nuclear and Conventional Weapons, and Land Mines The Dogs of War p. 167 6 An End to Impunity? The Nuremberg Legacy International Criminals: Pirates, Slavers and Kaisers The Nazi Leaders: Summary Execution? The Trial Judgment Day Victor's Justice? Towards Universal Jurisdiction (Genocide, Torture, Apartheid) p. 203 7 Slouching Towards Nemesis Into This Blackness The Duty to Prosecute The Limits of Amnesty Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice The Case for Retribution p. 243 8 The Balkan Trials Legal basis of the Hague Tribunal How the Tribunal Operates The Tadic Case Individual Responsibility p. 285 9 The International Criminal Court Rome 1998: The Statute International Crimes The Courts The Trial The Future p. 324 10 The Case of General Pinochet An Arrest in Harley Street The State in International Law Sovereign Immunity Bring On the Diplomats The Law Takes Its Course p. 368 11 The Guernica Paradox: Bombing for Humanity The Right of Humanitarian Intervention We Bombed in Kosovo Just War The Case of East Timor p. 401 Epilogue Notes Appendices: A: Human Rights in History B: Universal Declaration of Human Rights C: Ratifications of UN Human Rights Conventions D: Excerpts from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court E: Excerpts from the Charter of the United Nations Index p. 437 p. 455 p. 479 p. 485 p. 494 p. 496 p. 506 p. 513