Bargaining Away Justice: India, Pakistan, and the International Politics of Impunity for the Bangladesh Genocide

Abstract

In recent decades, the world has seen a profusion of new institutions of international criminal justice, with the creation of United Nations criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, hybrid courts for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, national courts exercising universal jurisdiction, and the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC). Several heads of government—Laurent Gbagbo, Hissène Habré, Slobodan Miloševic, Charles Taylor—have faced trial. These events have revived a vigorous debate on the roots of international justice, as well as on its impact on postwar societies.