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Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda by Nigel Eltringham (review)
Human Rights Quarterly ( IF 0.8 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-12
Franziska Boehme

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda by Nigel Eltringham
  • Franziska Boehme (bio)
Nigel Eltringham, Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, (Cambridge University Press, 2019), ISBN 9781108485593, 218 pages.

When we assess the record and effectiveness of an international court or tribunal, we often use quantifiable metrics such as the number of cases completed, suspects convicted, or witnesses heard. In his book Genocide Never Sleeps, Nigel Eltringham takes a different approach by shining a spotlight on what happens within these institutions, how the people who work there perceive their jobs and their international justice legacy. Enriched with long quotes from interviews and trial observation, Eltringham provides a deep and rich account that singularly adds a more personal dimension to existing studies on the legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In his quest to get at law's power through the courtroom's mini dramas and to thus relay the "hidden script" that cannot be gleaned from merely reading trial transcripts, Eltringham describes the extratextual language of the court(room) by focusing for instance on body postures, gestures, and performance in Chapter 2 and the tribunal's setting and structure in Chapter 3.

Eltringham, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex, bases his book in social anthropology. His "deep hanging out in the Geneva of Africa" consisted of extensive fieldwork at the seat of the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania, for eight months between 2005 and 2007, where he observed trials and conducted several dozen interviews with judges, lawyers, and other court officials. In addition, the book features insights from "informal conversations held during the day of coffee, tea and lunch breaks and in the evenings and weekends in bars, at dinner parties and on day trips."1 This deep immersion can be felt in the book's pages when the author recounts snippets from judges' personal lives or lawyers' [End Page 428] exasperation with the trial process. For instance, the author reveals how the ICTR's simultaneous interpretation disrupted the lawyers' and judges' habitual behavior in the court room to use simpler language and get into what one interviewee called "tribunal mode."

The book's pages are filled with these experiences at the ICTR, extensively bookended or related to existing theoretical concepts on which the author draws, including theater metaphor/analogy, ritualization, or performance. For instance, he includes research on the problematic features of witness statements depending on which and how questions had been asked and how these statements were the facts based on which judges decided court cases: "Evaluation of statements given by Rwandan witnesses should, therefore, take account of the fact that statements can never be exhaustive and are products of questions asked."2

The strength of Genocide Never Sleeps lies in getting to know the people behind "international criminal justice" which reveals the diversity of experiences and legal perspectives that staff bring to the table. I applaud the author for being true to a multitude of understandings, diligently reporting the contrasting perspectives that he encountered. His account of the ICTR cautions us against homogenizing these institutions, the offices, and personnel within them. The author is especially assertive in his arguments when it comes to the impact of culture in the courtroom. Eltringham warns us of essentializing culture, in contrast to some judges and lawyers who would remark on the way that Rwandans testify and behave at the court: For the author, rather than Rwandan culture, "the four main impediments to witness testimony […] were the effect of interpretation; the fact that witnesses could only respond to the question asked by a lawyers or judge; the impact of protection orders that anonymized witnesses and that many witnesses had given multiple testimony in multiple for a."3 This shows the importance of different ways of "doing justice" and "raises the question of whether lawyers and judges misinterpreted as 'cultural' the witness's resistance to the exceptional way in which stories were elicited in the ICTR courtroom."4 Eltringham's book is essential reading for anyone interested in transitional justice and especially the ICTR. It shows what is often left...



中文翻译:

种族灭绝绝不睡觉:卢旺达问题国际刑事法庭的活法(Nigel Eltringham)(评论)

代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:

审核人:

  • 种族灭绝绝不睡:卢旺达问题国际刑事法庭的活法(Nigel Eltringham)
  • Franziska Boehme(生物)
奈杰尔·埃尔特汉姆(Nigel Eltringham),《种族灭绝绝不睡觉:卢旺达国际刑事法庭的生存法》(剑桥大学出版社,2019年),ISBN 9781108485593,218页。

当我们评估国际法院或法庭的记录和有效性时,我们经常使用可量化的指标,例如已完成的案件数量,犯罪嫌疑人或证人。在他的书大屠杀永不眠,奈杰尔Eltringham采用了不同的方法,通过照射在发生什么聚光灯这些机构,在那里工作的人们如何看待他们的工作和国际正义的遗产。Eltringham丰富了采访和审判观察的引述,提供了深刻而丰富的论述,在现有的有关卢旺达问题国际刑事法庭(ICTR)遗产的研究中,单单增加了更多个人方面的内容。为了通过法庭的迷你剧获得法律的权力,并以此传达仅从阅读审判记录中无法收集到的“隐藏的文字”,埃尔特灵厄姆通过关注身体姿势来描述法庭(房间)的超文本语言。 ,手势和表演,请参阅第2章,法庭的设置和结构请参阅第3章。

萨塞克斯大学人类学系高级讲师Eltringham的著作以社会人类学为基础。他的“在非洲日内瓦的深处闲逛”包括在2005年至2007年之间在坦桑尼亚阿鲁沙的卢旺达问题国际法庭所在地进行的广泛野外调查,历时8个月,在那里他观察了审判并与法官,律师等进行了数十次访谈。法院官员。此外,该书还提供了“在咖啡,茶和午餐休息日以及晚上和周末在酒吧,晚餐聚会和一日游中进行的非正式对话”的见解。1当作者讲述法官的个人生活或律师的摘要时,可以在本书的书页中感受到这种沉浸感[End Page 428]恼怒的审判过程。例如,作者揭示了卢旺达问题国际法庭的同声传译如何打乱法庭上律师和法官的惯常行为,使他们使用更简单的语言并进入一个被访者所说的“审裁模式”。

本书的页面充斥着卢旺达问题国际法庭的这些经验,这些经验广泛地被书记或与作者所借鉴的现有理论概念相关,包括戏剧隐喻/类比,仪式化或表演。例如,他对证人陈述的问题特征进行了研究,这取决于提出询问的方式和方式,以及根据法官决定法院案件所依据的事实,这些陈述是怎样的事实:“因此,对卢旺达证人的陈述进行评价应采取以下行动:考虑到陈述永远不会是详尽无遗的,而是问题的产物。” 2个

种族灭绝的力量永无止境在于了解“国际刑事司法”背后的人们,这揭示了工作人员带到餐桌上的经验和法律观点的多样性。我赞扬作者忠实于多种理解,并努力地汇报他所遇到的截然不同的观点。他对卢旺达问题国际法庭的陈述提醒我们不要使这些机构,办公室和其中的人员同质化。对于文化在法庭上的影响,作者的论断尤其自信。埃尔特林汉姆警告我们,必须将文化视为根本,与一些法官和律师不同意卢旺达人在法庭上作证和举止的方式:对于作者而言,见证卢旺达[…]的四个主要障碍是卢旺达文化,而不是卢旺达文化。解释的效果;证人只能回答律师或法官提出的问题的事实;保护令的影响使证人不愿透露姓名,而且许多证人为证人提供了多次证词。”3这表明了“司法”的不同方式的重要性,并且“提出了一个问题,即律师和法官是否将证人误解为'文化',是证人对在卢旺达问题国际法庭法庭上引述故事的特殊方式的抵制。” 4对于对过渡时期司法特别是卢旺达问题国际法庭有兴趣的任何人,Eltringham的书都是必不可少的读物。它显示了经常剩下的东西...

更新日期:2021-05-12
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