Bangladesh should Host ICC's proceedings in Cox's Bazar

On 4 August 2020 legal representatives of three groups of Rohingya victims asked the Pre-Trial Chamber to direct the Registry to assess venues outside the Netherlands, so that proceedings might be held closer to the people living in the camps at Cox’s Bazar. The Rome Statute permits the Court to sit away from The Hague. This piece supports the request and works through what acting on it would take.

The reasoning is about what proceedings are for. Justice conducted eight thousand kilometres from the affected population is legible to lawyers and remote to everyone else, and a Court whose design depends on victim participation has a practical stake in being physically reachable by victims. Set against that are the security, logistical and diplomatic costs of sitting in the state that hosts the displaced.

This marks a turn in the writing collected here: the point at which I move from commenting on international criminal proceedings to arguing about how they ought to be conducted. The subsequent work on internal justice follows from that shift.