The state has primary responsibility for protecting the security and promoting the welfare of its citizens. To this end, it has traditionally been granted the responsibilities and privileges of sovereignty. However, in recent years, the sanctity of this norm has come into question. Developments in the international system, such as globalization, and developments within states - such as impoverishment and weak or failing governance - render some states unable to discharge these responsibilities. In some cases state agencies can constitute a direct threat to the safety and welfare of citizens.

In recent years the individual has been accorded increasing prominence in governance and codes of conduct at all levels. In the sphere of international human rights law, this prominence has a number of dimensions. Safeguards against violations of individual and group human rights are embedded into national, regional and global organizations and conventions. The individual is undeniably evolving legal personality in the international setting. Shifts in attitudes - and, at a slower rate, shifts in policy - are placing greater emphasis upon human rights and human needs in a model of 'human security' that goes beyond traditional military and state-centric concepts of security. Simultaneously, contemporary conflicts have resulted in the increasingly visible victimization of innocents and civilians. Here, as well as the victim, the individual is also the focus of accountability for severe abuses of human rights.

In this context there have been rapid and fundamentally important developments in individual criminal responsibility at the international level, and in particular for grave breaches of humanitarian law. In landmark decisions in 1993 and 1994, the UN Security Council determined that violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda constituted a threat to international peace and security. At the 1998 Rome conference 120 states voted in support of a statute creating an International Criminal Court (ICC), to prosecute those guilty of crimes against humanity wherever such crimes might occur. These decisions reflected and strengthened a growing consensus that (individual) accountability and justice are the essential foundations of peace and stability both within and between societies.

Conference themes

This conference will explore the changing political and human rights context that gave rise to the establishment of the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the adoption of the Rome Statute. From an interdisciplinary perspective the conference will examine the political, legal and institutional experiences of the tribunals and the Rome Statute in a comparative and forward-looking way. Particular emphasis will be given to the actual and potential role of international humanitarian law in building peace, conflict settlement and reconciliation, and in promoting international norms of justice and accountability. Important questions will include:

• How did the establishment of the tribunals and their jurisprudence influence the development of international human rights law? What is the significance of the Rome Statute in this context?

• What are the arguments (ethical, legal and political) for norms of accountability and justice at the international level? Should justice be local? Should efforts be directed towards strengthening local - rather than global - capacity?

• What is the position of the tribunals and the ICC in relation to national courts? What are their legal possibilities to limit the sovereignty of national states, especially with regard to the extradition of criminal suspects?

• Can the tribunals and the ICC really bring justice to all victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity? What facilities do they provide in the field of (financial) reparation and compensation?

• What is the record of the tribunals in promoting post-conflict peace building: promoting peace, security and reconciliation?

• Do the tribunals and the ICC not only guarantee the human rights of the victim but also those of the defendant, however heinous their crimes may be?

• What do the tribunals contribute to the debate on 'transitional justice': balancing justice and stability; dealing with the past without perpetuating enmities; dealing with the past without jeopardizing stability or democratization? Is there really a tension between justice and peace/stability - has this perception undermined the effectiveness of the tribunals?

By analysing legal, political and ethical problems of these kinds, we will move closer to the key question of this conference: Do the tribunals and the adoption of the Rome Statute give rise to the emergence of a new political and legal culture in which immunity and impunity are being significantly challenged by individual responsibility and accountability? Are the establishment of the tribunals and the ICC to be seen as a turning-point in the history of international human rights protection?

Conference objectives

The objectives of the conference will be: capacity development - disseminating experience of international criminal law to advanced legal students, legal practitioners, and public servants; raising awareness and understanding in support of international criminal law, promoting it as an integral element of international peace and security; and strengthening broad-based support of international cooperation in the area of criminal law and the International Criminal Court.

The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare. Its activities focus primarily on peace and conflict resolution, development in a changing world, and science and technology in relation to human welfare. The University operates through a world-wide network of research and postgraduate training centers, with its planning and coordinating headquarters in Tokyo.

The Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) is a research institute of the Faculty of Law of Utrecht University, and serves as a centre for human rights studies. It conducts and promotes research and collects relevant documentation on all human rights issues with the aim of enhancing and disseminating knowledge on human rights procedures and practices. At the national level, SIM coordinates all teaching and research activities of the Netherlands School of Human Rights Research, which is a joint effort of the faculties of law and humanities of a number of universities in the Netherlands. At the international level SIM participates in and serves as the Secretariat of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI), which consists of human rights research institutes from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.