Overview
- First book to examine the UN Security Council procedure for authorizing international criminal investigations
- Presents evidence based on archival research and interviews with diplomats who participated in the relevant deliberations
- Only book to examine the Security Council’s creation of international criminal tribunals
- Combines insights from the fields of international relations, international law and human rights
Part of the book series: Studies in Global Justice (JUST, volume 20)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
- International Criminal Court
- UN Security Council and International Criminal Tribunals
- Atrocities Investigations and the UN Security Council
- Atrocities in the post-Cold War era
- Domestic responses to atrocities
- International responses to atrocities
- History of the UN Security Council’s creation
- UN Security Council’s position within international affairs
- How The UN Security Council Operates
- Actions in creating an atrocities investigation for Darfur
- Interplay of Power and Legitimacy
- International criminal investigations
About this book
The book explains why and how the UN Security Council authorizes international criminal investigations into mass atrocities. In doing so, it tackles head-on the obvious double standards of global justice, where few atrocities get investigated and most slip below the headlines.
The book argues that the Council’s decision-making procedure is central to understanding the Council’s decisions. This procedure is broken into three distinct steps, namely the role of diplomats at the Council, the Council’s reliance on third parties and the Council’s resort to precedent. The volume documents that the Council authorized international criminal investigations only into the handful of mass atrocities for which the Council’s deliberations successfully completed each of these three steps.
Written for both scholars and practitioners, the book combines insights from the fields of international relations, international law and human rights. Through archival research and interviews with UNSC diplomats who took part in deliberations on atrocities, the volume presents evidence that supports its argument across cases and across time. In doing so, the book avoids the yes/no (or 0 vs 1) tendency of many social science projects, thereby acknowledging that there is no silver bullet to explain the work of the Council’s five permanent and ten elected members.
Chris Kaoutzanis's Procedure Matters is a deep dive into how the UN Security Council actually works in dealing with some of the world's worst atrocities. Showing that UN procedure does matter, Kaoutzanis illuminates the limited accountability for international crimes that can be expected from that vital institution. As importantly, he offers a road map for how to use UN legitimating procedures to navigate the power politics of that august body. This is a map no scholar of international institutions and no human rights activist should be without.
Michael Doyle, Columbia University
This project recognizes what the scholarly literature has generally ignored or deemphasized: the central role of the Security Council in responding to mass atrocity situations. As much as international lawyers would hate to admit it, the legal response to international crimes is initially controlled not by international judges and tribunals, but rather by the Security Council and its geo-political and diplomatic complications. Kaoutzanis has put the sun back at the center of our solar system.
Jens David Ohlin, Cornell Law School
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
His academic focus is placed on the intersection of international law and international relations, with a focus on the reactions of the United Nations Security Council to mass atrocities. His publications also examine issues of international criminal justice. Among his experiences, Kaoutzanis was a summer intern at the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges, at the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia. He speaks Greek, English and French.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The UN Security Council and International Criminal Tribunals: Procedure Matters
Authors: Christodoulos Kaoutzanis
Series Title: Studies in Global Justice
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23777-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-23776-9Published: 02 January 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-23779-0Published: 26 August 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-23777-6Published: 01 January 2020
Series ISSN: 1871-0409
Series E-ISSN: 1871-1456
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXI, 201
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 7 illustrations in colour
Topics: Political Science, Public International Law , International Organization, Diplomacy