Abstract

In spite of the large scale violations that continue to play out within the Syrian civil war, international responses supportive of individual criminal responsibility remain radically underdeveloped. This would have been a common stance for much of international legal history, but since the end of the Cold War and the monumental rise of the International Criminal Justice field, the current crisis over Syria is a human tragedy that threatens to undermine the normative and institutional edifice of international criminal law. Operating at the margins of inter-governmental agencies is the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), which was established through Western donor monies in 2011 to amass documentation, build case files and provide training to a nascent criminal justice sector in both Syria and Iraq. The highly sensitive and secretive nature of CIJA’s work presents difficulties for policy makers and scholars alike to assess the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach to accountability. Here, in this seminar Dr Burgis-Kasthala shared initial findings from over twenty interviews conducted with CIJA staff working at their European headquarters as well as in Syria to speculate on the possible contribution of CIJA to accountability efforts and to reflect more broadly on the evolution of the international criminal justice field.