Doctoral Candidate Jack Provan

Asserting the value of criminalisation for the purposes of transitional justice: A study of forced displacement

My research project will argue that international criminal law can and should follow the primary goal of facilitating transitional justice. The project will focus specifically on the crime against humanity of forced displacement in order to achieve a narrow scope, and because the often cross-border nature of forced displacement raises an interesting discussion surrounding jurisdiction.

The main argument will be that the ICL toolbox, which extends beyond prosecution, is more suited to rebuilding and maintaining security, development & governance in post-conflict societies than a strictly prosecutive approach. The weaknesses of this claim will be analysed and are identified as three main issues: (1) the lack of universal jurisdiction; (2) the need to assign individual criminal liability; and (3) specifically in the context of forced displacement, the ICC trend of interpreting the crime as evidence of other, more “severe” crimes such as genocide, which may risk overlooking the victims of forced displacement itself. The thesis will then look in greater detail at the alternative solutions ICL can offer and their value in the process of transitional justice: broadly following the pillars of international justice present in much academic literature, namely (1) truth-seeking; (2) prosecution; (3) reparations; and (4) institutional reform. It is argued that ICL is particularly effective in the achievement of those goals, and further, that institutional reform in the form of establishing ad-hoc courts as an alternative to ICC intervention may have the added benefit of bolstering regional justice systems and restoring faith in domestic governance.

Supervisor: Prof.  Dr. Pierre Thielbörger

About Jack Provan