Transnational Legal Ordering and the Criminalization of Violations of Human Rights — Conditions, Consequences, and the Case of Darfur

Joachim J. Savelsberg

Abstract

This contribution discusses responses to the Darfur conflict as part of transnational legal ordering of criminal law. It identifies interventions further as what Kathryn Sikkink has called the justice cascade, the replacement of impunity by the pursuit of individual criminal accountability against perpetrators of grave human rights violations. Driving forces are international organizations and international human rights NGOs. The case of Darfur thus provides insights into strengths and limits of the justice cascade. International Criminal Court (ICC) charges, reaching up to Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, produced representations of the Darfur conflict within the crime frame. A report by the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (ICID) and the ICC’s indictments depicted powerful political actors as criminal perpetrators. In the logic of criminal law, mass violence is attributed to a few individuals. Structural conditions and organizational context are not reflected in the judicial field’s representation of mass violence. Yet, the criminal justice representation of mass violence conflicts with those generated in the humanitarian aid and diplomacy fields. While media reporting in eight countries reflects all of these representations, the crime frame prevails in the aggregate, albeit not in all countries. Cultural consequences of transnational legal ordering of criminal law is thus co-determined by nation-level cultural and institutional contexts.