To officially launch the International Justice Lab, the College of William and Mary’s Global Research Institute held a roundtable discussion Friday, Jan. 31, entitled, “International Law and Justice: Challenges and Challengers in the 21st Century.”
The panel featured academics and practitioners in the field of international law and human rights, which included professor Wayne Sandholtz from the University of Southern California, University of Minnesota professor Tanisha Fazal and international law student Layla Abi-Falah ’17, J.D ’20.
College Provost Peggy Agouris introduced founder and director of the International Justice Lab Kelebogile Zvobgo, who moderated the roundtable discussion. Agouris described her excitement seeing the lab evolve from an initial idea to a final product.
“This is one of the best parts of my job, being here and events like this which signify the initial stage of something that has resulted from the work of several people and has a bright future ahead,” Agouris said.
Fazal began the discussion about international justice and human rights by focusing on medical humanitarian workers and the challenges they face in conflict zones.
“Increasingly, they see real tension between the work that they want to do and their ability to abide by the founding principles of humanitarianism, which are neutrality, impartiality, independence and humanity,” Fazal said.
“Increasingly, they see real tension between the work that they want to do and their ability to abide by the founding principles of humanitarianism, which are neutrality, impartiality, independence and humanity,” Fazal said.
Fazal used the Battle of Mosul in 2016 as a case study of this tension. According to Fazal, there was a clear need for medical aid, but a low supply of it. The non-governmental organizations that were expected to deliver aid were reluctant to do so because they worried about the safety of their staff.
According to Fazal, Iraqi military was unwilling or unable to deliver the medical aid they were required to provide, as stated by the Geneva Convention. The World Health Organization contracted other NGOs to offer aid. But given the rising global expectations for healthcare on the front lines of conflict zones, these NGOs embedded with Iraqi security forces to reach those areas.
“This violates the principle of independence,” Fazal said. “You are supposed to be independent from security forces, and arguably also violates the principle of impartiality. And you certainly saw this in this case where Iraqi security forces were saying you have to prioritize treatment of our military personnel over treatment of enemy combatants, in this case, the Islamic State, or even civilians. And this also obviously has implications for the idea that these humanitarian groups are neutral.”
Fazal also discussed multiple challenges she foresees in conflict zones, including the rise of infrastructural targeting in civil wars which has amplified disease incidences, civil wars increasingly being characterized as guerilla warfare, and the dangers of emerging technologies like drones and artificial intelligence.
Like Fazal, Sandholtz acknowledged that there was a crisis in international law. Instead of focusing on the perspective of medical humanitarianism, however, Sandholtz highlighted the challenges of human rights and international justice stemming from rising authoritarianism throughout the global community.
“China is a rising power with huge ambitions,” Sandholtz said. “It acts quite aggressively in some areas like the South China Sea. … We could think of Russia as a newly aggressive power with a hot war going on currently in Ukraine and having already annexed Crimea. We could think of the Trump administration and its assault on multilateral institutions that the United States helped create and has benefited from for so many years. I think there’s actually a more, at the moment, severe challenge to international rule of law, human rights and global justice. I see that as the resurgence of authoritarianism in the world.”
Sandholtz explained that creeping authoritarianism globally has manifested in the forms of backlash against and withdrawals from international justice institutions. What’s different about this new wave authoritarianism, according to Sandholtz, is that they are elected authoritarians with popular mandates.
“They are coming to power not through coups and revolutions, but through democratic processes,” Sandholtz said. “And then they use democratic forms to undermine and erode democratic institutions from within. They target, in particular, the courts, the independent courts. They target freedom of expression and of the press. And they target, therefore, the ability of civil society to organize and participate in public life.”
According to Sandholtz, these three areas are paramount to identifying and criticizing rights violations. With authoritarian powers undermining these institutions, the mechanisms of accountability in the international justice and human rights spaces are weakening.
As a solution, Sandholtz encouraged scholars to refocus their studies away from norm-building and to instead the sustainability and defense of norms. Sandholtz also said that human rights advocacy and litigation may not be enough for practitioners to pursue. He said activists, scholars and advocates may have to focus their efforts on resisting authoritarianism.
After interning at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Abi-Falah identified gridlock, international funding fatigue and critiques of international courts’ effectiveness as the major obstacles facing international tribunals today.
Abi-Falah discussed a new model of international law, where international institutions aid local prosecutors and authorities in fighting for justice through local courts rather than international tribunals.
The Mechanism, for example, has millions of pieces of documents, interviews and other pieces of evidence that can be transferred to local prosecutors and courts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with training and capacity building, to support their pursuits of justice.
“It’s about empowering local affected populations to seek out the justice that they desire in their own language, in their own home space and under their own terms,” Abi-Falah said.
“It’s about empowering local affected populations to seek out the justice that they desire in their own language, in their own home space and under their own terms,” Abi-Falah said. “And that’s the future of international criminal prosecution, because the world is actually turning away from international tribunals and is turning towards domestic prosecutions.”
Abi-Falah discussed Syria as an example of a country that one day could be emboldened to take charge of its own justice process, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia before it.
“It starts in the process of judicial reform within Syria that engenders national ownership, rather than spending billions of dollars towards the creation of an international ad hoc tribunal,” Abi-Falah said. “It’s about supporting judicial reform within Syria, but it’s also about allowing the international community to support Syria in bringing about a postwar judiciary that’s independent, that’s capable, that’s non-biased, that’s willing and just and therefore able to prosecute all perpetrators of international crimes in Syria.”
Nitya Labh ’22, who is a member of the first cohort of research assistants for the International Justice Lab, said that she was most impacted by Abi-Falah’s discussion of the international trials that are still ongoing in the world today.
“I study the trials in Bosnia, post-conflict development and stuff like that,” Labh said. “So, for her to say, well, actually, these trials are ongoing, unbeknownst to most people that they’re trying to make appeals and things like that, it makes it feel like history isn’t over yet. Nuremberg seems very final, but a lot of the trials that did or didn’t happen are still waiting for a final word. And so, it makes me hopeful that I can be a part of it.”