In an effort to promote dialogue on advancing accountability for crimes against humanity and genocide, ICTJ has launched a special podcast series on complementarity. The complementarity principle, enshrined in the Rome Statue, asserts that accountability for mass atrocity can only be achieved if national judicial systems are fully involved in the process, cooperating with other justice mechanisms such as reparations programs, institutional reform, and truth-seeking. In accordance with this notion, the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and prosecutes serious crimes only where states are unwilling or genuinely unable to do so.
The recent meeting at Greentree, hailed as a major step in turning complementarity from policy into practice, gathered some of the leading experts in the international justice, national justice practitioners, civil society representatives, international policymakers, and development actors. Their goal was to examine relevant experiences and practices and seek concrete measures to implement complementarity.
Utilizing this wealth of knowledge and experience, we spoke to some of leading global voices on justice in conversations that form our new series. In the first podcast we ask what the way forward in implementing complementarity is, and what the role of the ICC and development agencies should be.
Our guests are Phakiso Mochochoko, director of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division of the ICC; Tarik El-Tumi, program director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya; Judge Dan Akiiki-Kiiza, head of the International Crimes Division of the High Court of Uganda; Binta Mansaray, registrar of the Special Court in Sierra Leone; Ambassador Thomas Winkler, undersecretary for legal affairs of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Heidy Rombouts, program director of GIZ Program for Social Justice, Reconciliation and National Cohesion in Kenya.
