Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)

Accounts of international criminal courts have tended to consist of reflections on abstract legal texts, on judgements and trial transcripts. Genocide Never Sleeps, based on ethnographic research at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), provides an alternative account, describing a messy, flawed human process in which legal practitioners faced with novel challenges sought to reconfigure long-standing habits and opinions while maintaining a commitment to 'justice'. From the challenges of simultaneous translation to collaborating with colleagues from different legal traditions, legal practitioners were forced to scrutinise that which normally remains assumed in domestic law. By providing an account of this process, Genocide Never Sleeps not only provides a unique insight into the exceptional nature of the ad hoc, improvised ICTR and the day-to-day practice of international criminal justice, but also holds up for fresh inspection much that is naturalised and assumed in unexceptional, domestic legal processes. "Between 7 April and mid-July 1994 an estimated 937,000 Rwandans (according to a 2001 census the vast majority of whom were Tutsi), were murdered in massacres committed by militia, the gendarmerie and elements of the army, often with the participation of the local population (see Des Forges, 1999; Eltringham, 2004; IRIN, 2001)"-- Provided by publisher Genocide Never Sleeps provides an ethnographic account of the messy, human process of international criminal justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. It is for readers interested in international criminal justice, human rights, the anthropology of law and contemporary African politics.