Victim Reparation and the International Criminal Court
| Author | Jo-Anne Wemmers |
| Published date | 01 September 2009 |
| Date | 01 September 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800901600201 |
International Review ofVictimology.
2009,
Vol.
16,
pp.
123-126
0269-7580/09
$10
©A
8
Academic
Publishers
-
Printed
in
Great
Britain
VICTIM
REPARATION
AND
THE
INTERNATIONAL
CRIMINAL
COURT
JO-ANNE
WEMMERS*
Universite
de
Montreal,
Canada
Victimology emerged soon after World War II, which was characterised by
genocide and crimes against humanity. The horrors that occurred during this
war led to the development
of
the first international criminal tribunal, the
Nuremburg Tribunal, at which 20 former Nazi leaders -civil servants and
military
personal-
stood trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Despite this temporal correlation between the war and the emergence
of
victimology, the early victimologists did not address victims
of
crimes against
humanity and war crimes. Instead they focused on conventional crimes such as
homicide. Early victimologists, authors like Benjamin Mendelsohn, Hans von
Hentig and Marvin Wolfgang, tried to explain crime by examining the role
of
the victim (Wemmers, 2003).
By the late 1970s, influenced by the mass disappearances
of
civilians in
several Latin American countries, some victimologists began to draw attention
to victims
of
political crimes (Schafer, 1977). A classic article in this respect is
Robert Elias' seminal paper: Transcending our Social Reality
of
Victimization:
Toward a New Victimology
of
Human Rights, which was published in 1985. In
it, Elias argued in favour
of
widening the scope
of
victimology from what
Bienkowska (1992) refers to as penal victimology, which focuses on
conventional crimes, to a victimology
of
human rights. Elias believed that
as
long as victimology focused uniquely on crimes defined in a nation's criminal
code, it could never be critical and independent
of
the state. In order for
victimology
to
not be a mere tool
of
the establishment and for it
to
develop as a
legitimate and independent science it had to be released from the shackles
of
the
criminal code and focus on human rights violations.
A milestone in the evolution ofvictimology and its recognition
of
victims
of
gross violations
of
human rights was the adoption
of
the Declaration
of
Basic
Principles
of
Justice
for
Victims
of
Crime and Abuse
of
Power by the General
*
Jo-Anne
Wemmers
is
Head
of
the
Research
Group
Victimology
and
Restorative Justice
at
the
International Centre
for
Comparative Criminology, Universite
de
Montreal,
C.P.
6128,
succursalc Centre-Ville, Montreal,
Quebec
H3C
317,
Canada
Go-anne.m.
wemmers@umontreal.ca).
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