Transitional Justice and a State's Response to Mass Atrocity
Reassessing the Obligations to Investigate and Prosecute
Description:... This book brings a new focus to the ongoing debate on holding perpetrators of massive humanitarian and human rights law violations accountable in countries in transition. It provides a clear-cut and comprehensive legal analysis of the content and nature of a state's obligations to investigate and prosecute as enshrined in the most important humanitarian and human rights treaties; it disentangles the common fallacy that these procedural obligations are naturally rooted and clearly spelled out in the general human rights treaties; and it explains the flaws in an absolutist interpretation. This analysis serves to understand whether such procedural obligations, if narrowly construed, act as impediments to countries emerging from periods of conflict or systematic repression in the face of contingent circumstances and the formidable dilemmas raised by a univocal understanding of justice as retribution
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