Abstract The expanding role of artificial intelligence in military decision-making poses interpretive challenges for command responsibility under Article 28 of the Rome Statute. Existing scholarship has largely addressed this problem through international humanitarian law and the so-called ‘accountability gap’, leaving its implications for international criminal responsibility underexplored. This article argues that artificial intelligence does not render command responsibility obsolete but requires a more context-sensitive application of its two central elements: knowledge and effective control. It proposes that the ‘should have known’ standard under Article 28(a) be interpreted to encompass risk awareness of AI system limitations, and that effective control extend to the organisational and technological conditions governing AI deployment. These reinterpretations are integrated within a layered model of responsibility operating across operational, command, and institutional levels. The distinction between Article 28(a) and 28(b) also acquires particular significance in AI-enabled contexts, where civilian decision-makers play a growing role in AI procurement.
Abstract For the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Rwandan Genocide started in April 1994 and ended in July of the same year, due to the relevant United Nations Security Council resolution, which tasked the ICTR to prosecute the genocide. In recent years, several authors have claimed that the genocide against the Tutsi to be preceded by another genocide: the massacres against the Bagogwe in the northern part of the country. In this article, we discuss the evidentiary background of these claims, assess them in terms of International Criminal Law and the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with the aim to establish whether they fulfilled the criteria for a genocide. We emphasize the importance of the protected group criteria and the issue of the perpetrators’ genocidal intent. We conclude that the massacres against the Bagogwe fulfilled even the demanding requirements of the ICTR’s concept of crimes against humanity. However, at first sight, the Bagogwe seem to lack the necessary characteristics of a group protected by the Genocide Convention. By applying the Akayesu criteria of ‘any stable and permanent’ group and new research showing they were targeted not just as Tutsi but specificly as traditional cattle holding Tutsi, we propose to overcome this obstacle.
Abstract The study analyses the use of innovative forensic tools and technologies in combating corruption, to systematise international experience, and to examine the specifics of the application in Ukraine. The methodology employed the comparative legal method for analysing the experience of countries in the field of artificial intelligence and Big Data, content analysis of blockchain technologies in nine countries, and structural-functional analysis of Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies. Findings revealed the effectiveness of AI and Big Data: a global financial institution detected four times more suspicious activity with a 60 per cent reduction in false positives, while blockchain enhanced transparency, as seen in Georgia’s land registration system. Uneven technological capacity among Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies was identified, with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau leading in technology use. Key issues included unclear legal definitions of electronic evidence in Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code. The study’s results offer practical recommendations for improving Ukraine’s anti-corruption framework.
Abstract The enforcement of international criminal law depends on state cooperation, yet persistent disagreements over whether sitting Heads of State from non-parties to the International Criminal Court enjoy immunity from arrest suggest a challenge that doctrinal analysis alone cannot resolve. This article undertakes an interdisciplinary, meta-doctrinal analysis, drawing on Martin Wight’s three traditions of international theory (Realism, Revolutionism and Rationalism) to argue that divergent interpretations of Articles 27 and 98 of the Rome Statute are driven by fundamentally different philosophical ideas about the nature of international society. Applying this framework to state responses to arrest warrants against Al-Bashir, Putin and Netanyahu, the analysis shows how each tradition influences the assumptions on which doctrinal reasoning about the applicable law proceeds, yielding divergent, and mutually exclusive, interpretations. The immunity debate thus emerges as a permanent site of contestation, shaped by competing visions of international order embedded within the Rome Statute itself.
Abstract Following the election of a far-right government in 2023, Argentina’s stance on its transitional justice experience has changed significantly, with a rampant relativization and denial of the atrocities committed by the dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. The new government began calling for a ‘Complete Memory’ that would address the suffering of the victims of ‘subversion’. Shortly afterwards, Argentine courts ruled that a crime committed by a left-wing group in the 1970s constituted a ‘serious human rights violation’ and no legal statute of limitations applies. In the context of this regressive climate for the ‘Memory, Truth and Justice’ process, this article will present historical and legal arguments to illustrate how Argentina has dealt with the crimes committed by left-wing groups in the 1970s. It will also review the criteria required by international law at the time of the events with regard to crimes committed by both state and non-state actors.
Abstract The International Criminal Court provides victims with unprecedented opportunities to participate in legal proceedings, yet linguistic and cultural barriers significantly impede their meaningful engagement. Victims often come from diverse linguistic backgrounds diverging from the ICC’s working languages of English and French, creating disconnects that result in misunderstanding, exclusion, and alienation. While the ICC provides translation and interpretation services, these measures frequently fall short when complex legal concepts must be communicated across cultural divides. This paper argues that Legal Design—an interdisciplinary approach merging design thinking with legal expertise—offers a transformative solution. Through visual aids, plain language summaries, and culturally sensitive materials, Legal Design makes complex legal frameworks more intuitive and accessible. Drawing on comprehensive reports from UC Berkeley and REDRESS documenting persistent communication failures, this paper demonstrates how Legal Design principles can address specific barriers in victim participation. Rather than treating linguistic challenges as abstract problems, Legal Design provides practical solutions that transform barriers into opportunities for genuine inclusion, fundamentally reimagining how international criminal justice delivers on its commitment to equity.
Abstract The ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu/Gallant reignited debates over the nature of the Court’s jurisdiction with the focal point called the ‘Oslo Argument’, which contended that the Hague lacked jurisdiction over Israelis because Palestine lacked it under the Oslo Accords. The resulting submissions by amici curiae and parties before the Court, unprecedented in number, constitute a microcosm of contemporary international legal discourse over the ICC’s jurisdiction and therefore warrant close discourse analysis. The analysis offers an internal understanding of the argumentative structure therein and illuminates two systematized discursive regularities. One is the ‘delegation-based approach’, marked by assemblage of reifying and state-centric jurisdictional thinking with atomistic conceptions of the Court and the international order. Another is the ‘non-delegation-based approach’, grounded in a relational and autonomous conception of international jurisdiction with cosmopolitanism. Building on these findings, the concluding section explores possible strategies for lawyers, ranging from either/or choice to interstitial modes of argumentation.
Abstract ‘Transitional justice’ refers to the methods societies deploy to shift from endemic human rights abuses to better and more just places, ideally the desiderata of liberal democracy, but sometimes just less oppressive spaces. While initially diverse and local in nature, these methods have increasingly become standardized into globally consolidated ‘best practices.’ Among these, the pursuit of ‘open dialogue’ and ‘truth-telling’ has evolved into a pillar of transitional justice and its institutional interventions. Transparency and disclosure are methodologically advanced as cathartic social goods in post-conflict societies. Transparency is accompanied with another pivotal predicate, namely, that persons who suffer human rights abuses are designated as ‘victims’ and on that basis become entitled to reparations and remedial assistance. Individuals who suffer violence, however, do not always or consistently view frank dialogue and disclosure about who did what to whom as indubitably desirable, nor do they necessarily see themselves as ‘victims’ or, even if so, as sharing a common definition of what ‘victimhood’ means. This article examines these complexities and tensions in the context of northern Uganda. It draws upon the voices of 111 children born of conflict-related sexual violence. These are children conceived by, and then born, through rape, forced marriage, sexual slavery, and compelled pregnancy. Our research is epistemologically ground-breaking in that it centers the children themselves, unlike most accumulated knowledge on the topic which has tended to focus on the mothers. This article foregrounds the perceptions of these children, many of whom now are adults, about what they feel is best for them. Our research suggests that the ‘right not to be known’, rather than the dominant ‘right to know’, should be valued in post-conflict reconstruction. This article thereby contributes to an overall conversation about the experiences, tactics, strategies, and imaginations of young people who socially navigate fraught social terrain through the agentive practice of what we call ‘secreting’.
Abstract The aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is a test of the stability of the international order. International criminal justice is subject to excessive expectations that it often fails to meet. This article explores the challenges of non-cooperation with the International Criminal Court, the ratione materiae of the International Criminal Court and expectations in the fight against impunity in the framework of the Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. The importance of political and economic support from states for both the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine is emphasised.
Abstract Recent developments in juvenile justice policy have emphasised diversion and restorative justice as alternatives to punitive approaches. In this context, the 2024 Vietnam Law on Juvenile Justice reflects a shift toward a more child-centred framework. However, the extent of its substantive alignment with international standards and its effectiveness in practice remains contested. This study examines both the normative framework and the implementation of diversion in Vietnam. Using a qualitative doctrinal and comparative approach, it analyses domestic law alongside international standards and draws on secondary empirical evidence to assess institutional practices. The findings indicate structured partial convergence. Although diversion is formally recognised, its application remains inconsistent and constrained. Eligibility criteria are restrictive, decision-making authority is centralised, and restorative justice mechanisms, including victim participation, are weakly institutionalised. These challenges are compounded by limitations in institutional capacity, including gaps in training, coordination, and resources. The study argues that Vietnam’s system reflects state-mediated diversion, in which international norms are formally adopted but substantively reshaped by domestic institutional structures. The reform is therefore significant less as a complete break from earlier rehabilitative practices than as a legal and normative reframing of juvenile justice around diversion, restorative justice, and child-centred principles. Effective implementation requires not only legal reform but also clearer indicators of justice outcomes, stronger reconciliation mechanisms, and sustained institutional transformation.
Abstract Money laundering has become a major challenge for developing countries because it undermines financial integrity, weakens governance, and exposes the gap between formal legal reform and actual enforcement. Against this background, this study examines how Vietnam’s anti-money laundering (AML) criminal law can be reformed through a risk-based approach while remaining aligned with international standards. The study responds to four linked questions: how Vietnam’s money laundering offence aligns with Palermo Convention (UNTOC), and United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) requirements; how Vietnamese courts and enforcement bodies have used the offence in practice; what lessons can be drawn from comparative experiences, particularly Indonesia and Croatia; and how AML criminal law should address financial havens and international-crime-related illicit finance. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative single-case study design based on doctrinal and documentary analysis, supplemented by targeted comparative references to Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Europe Union (EU) prosecutorial materials. The findings show that Vietnam has made substantial progress in legislative alignment, particularly in criminalization, preventive regulation, and institutional design. However, significant weaknesses remain, including predicate-offence dependency, limited stand-alone laundering cases, evidentiary rigidity, uneven integration of risk-based reasoning into criminal enforcement, and fragmented inter-agency coordination. Comparative experience suggests that effectiveness depends not only on statutory transposition but also on risk-sensitive prosecution, usable financial intelligence, reliable statistics, foreign-predicate capability, asset recovery and judicial confidence in circumstantial proof. The study concludes that Vietnam’s next stage of AML reform should move beyond technical compliance toward operational adaptation, stronger vertical and horizontal coordination, and context-sensitive implementation of international AML standards within domestic criminal law.
Abstract The SCSL recognised forced marriage as a crime against humanity under ‘other inhumane acts’, identifying its core wrong as the coercive imposition of a conjugal status rather than sexual acts. This generates composite harms, including stigmatisation, domestic servitude, and identity reordering that endure beyond captivity. Building on SCSL, ECCC, and ICC Ongwen jurisprudence, as well as empirical research on bush wives and bush husbands, this article advances a status-centred framework that conceptualises forced marriage as a status-based crime against humanity. It clarifies the offence’s elements, proposes criteria for comparable gravity, and distinguishes forced marriage from sexual slavery and gender-based persecution. The article further outlines trauma-informed evidentiary strategies, sentencing responsive to composite harm, and reparations, and argues that a status-centred, gender-responsive yet gender-inclusive lens offers a normatively robust template for prosecuting status-based coercion in contemporary conflicts.
Abstract Corruption increasingly involves complex financial structures that make criminal prosecution difficult, and therefore non-conviction-based confiscation (NCBC) has become central to global asset recovery efforts. However, despite significant legal reforms, Vietnam’s framework remains largely conviction-dependent. This article aims to clarify Vietnam’s obligations under the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and to assess how far its current laws meet the Convention’s standards, particularly regarding NCBC. To achieve this, the study adopts a normative legal research design informed by a policy analysis approach and complements this with comparative analysis of established NCBC frameworks drawn from a range of mature legal systems and emerging regional models. This combined method allows for both doctrinal assessment and evaluation of institutional feasibility. The results show that Vietnam’s legal system lacks explicit statutory authority for NCBC, appropriate civil evidentiary thresholds, and independent judicial pathways for stand-alone confiscation proceedings. Furthermore, mechanisms for recognizing and enforcing foreign NCBC orders remain underdeveloped, while institutional fragmentation limits the effectiveness of asset tracing and management. These gaps reveal partial compliance with UNCAC and restrict Vietnam’s capacity to recover illicit assets, especially in transnational cases. The study concludes that Vietnam must introduce comprehensive reforms, including clear NCBC legislation, strengthened international cooperation mechanisms, and a dedicated asset recovery institution. Together, these measures would enable Vietnam to meet UNCAC obligations more fully and enhance the credibility and effectiveness of its anti-corruption framework.
The ICTY and ICJ’s determination that Srebrenica constituted a genocide embodied a historic and significant substantiation of genocide’s legal definition. These holdings stipulated that genocide could be located in a narrow spatial context, target the protected victim group in a distinct space isolated from locations where other massacres of similar gravity and intensity took place, and that a perpetrator’s intent can be formulated in a few days preceding the genocide’s commission. Following the decisions, scholars and practitioners respectively argued that the jurisprudence sur- rounding Srebrenica either impermissibly broadened or unreasonably restricted the legal content of genocide as a crime. In this article, I argue that both analyses are correct. The Srebrenica cases, in interpreting the definition of genocide, simulta- neously expanded and contracted genocide’s legal substance. This “definitional par- adox” exacerbated genocide’s existing indeterminacy as a technical means to describe mass atrocity. In turn, the “definitional paradox” has produced disparate deployments of the Srebrenica precedent in law and memory politics, creating a second paradox. This article then proceeds to examine this secondary “mnemonic paradox” and de- scribe how the dual narratives surrounding Srebrenica’s impact on the law of geno- cide prompted a legal and political dialectic where Srebrenica is used both to validate and legally articulate genocidal experiences, but is also politically deployed to diminish violence and promote denial. The introduction of these layered paradoxes also aims to challenge assumptions of international criminal law’s capacity to promote reconciliation and facilitate mnemonic interventions in contested contexts.
Abstract The aim of the study was to examine the criminal-legal aspects of offences against the sexual integrity of minors in Central Asian countries, and to assess the effectiveness of law enforcement and penitentiary programmes. The paper considers key types of offences such as rape, violent sexual acts, and involvement in prostitution and pornography. Differences in criminal law approaches to the punishment of such crimes in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan were analysed. The study revealed significant diversity in legislation across the region, which may result in legal gaps—particularly in addressing digital crimes such as the distribution of child pornography. The study also revealed significant issues in the region’s penitentiary systems. The practical significance of this research lies in the recommendations for improving criminal justice policy, enhancing justice and rehabilitation systems, and developing new approaches to combating crimes against minors.
Abstract This article examines the paradoxical impact of the use of social media open source evidence (SMOSE) on content producers during International Criminal Court proceedings. While initially hailed for its democratising potential, reliance on SMOSE in legal processes is set to reveal a complex reality for content producers. The paper traces SMOSE’s journey from production to evaluation, highlighting the gradual erosion of agency experienced by content producers. It argues that the Court’s procedural approach, focusing on digital artefacts rather than their producers, fails to address the personal nature of SMOSE and the risks it poses to its creators. Content producers are implicitly included in legal proceedings without direct involvement or protections afforded to formal witnesses. The article concludes by emphasising the need for a new framework or addition to existing frameworks that balance SMOSE’s evidentiary value with content producers’ rights and safety.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) established, under Article 75, its reparation regime to provide remedies for the harms suffered by victims of crimes falling within the Court’s jurisdiction. Reparations were granted to victims in Timbuktu as a means of addressing the harms caused by Al-Mahdi’s destruction of the protected mausoleums in 2012 when jihadist groups occupied Timbuktu. This article examines how ICC reparations contribute to victims’ lives in Timbuktu by introducing the concept of ‘victim-centred peace’. ‘Victims-centred peace’ is assessed through three dimensions: the delivery of justice, the material restoration of the causes of the harms suffered by victims, and victims’ own expression regarding their satisfaction with the reparation. The article employed a doctrinal methodology to investigate the contributions of these reparations, analysing relevant provisions of the Rome Statutes, legal scholarship, transcripts, and ICC reparations orders.
