Imagining international justice: a history of the Penal Humanitarian present

Since the 1990s, international investigations and prosecutions have become commonplace in the midst and aftermath of mass violence. International criminal justice institutions have contributed to redefining the meaning of justice through the prosecution and punishment of a select number of individuals bearing the most responsibility for mass violence, cementing a conception of justice where retributive action is undertaken in the name of victims. I develop the concept of Penal Humanitarianism to capture this contemporary paradigm of international criminal justice, which rests both on a punitive element (the logic of repression) and on a benevolent element (the logic of compassion). This thesis examines how Penal Humanitarianism has emerged, consolidated and been legitimated to become the dominant, and largely taken for granted, approach to providing accountability and justice in mass atrocity situations. I argue this Penal Humanitarian paradigm derives from and is legitimated through a social imaginary shared by international justice-makers. This social imaginary is the one through which policy-makers, practitioners, scholars and activists read the phenomenon of mass violence, determine its causes and propose solutions. I contend this social imaginary operates through three prevailing meta-narratives: the ending impunity for international crimes, justice for victims and justice as pacification narratives. This Penal Humanitarian paradigm is not an obvious consequence from the phenomenon of mass violence. Drawing from genealogical tools, I therefore inquire into the historical conditions of possibility and processes through which this paradigm has developed; and trace the emergence, consolidation and transformation of the three meta-narratives mentioned above from the post-WWII trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998. In doing so, I highlight the options left behind as the Penal Humanitarian paradigm came to dominate, to in turn encourage a critical rethinking of our present-day assumptions and attitude towards international criminal justice.