New book published: “De l’affaire Katanga au contrat social global: Un regard sur la Cour pénale internationale” by Juan Branco
On June 25th 2014, Germain Katanga became the first person to be convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Court. As his case continued to be cloaked in silence, this Congolese villager from the remote province of Ituri became a figure in the early history of a rising institution. Through a deconstruction of each stage of the proceedings against Katanga for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the ICC, this work attempts to understand how an institution built to prosecute the masterminds and those most responsible for the gravest crimes and atrocities targeted a 24-year-old Okapi hunter who never before heard of “The Hague”.
Lacking social control, unable to play the role for which it was designed more than ten years ago, the ICC has systematically blamed the States for its numerous failures. The reality is more complex, and this research reveals that the institution has a structural incapacity to act against the interests of the state order, and a fortiori against the dominants of that order, therefore rendering obsolete any of its cosmopolitan pretentions.
Following from a description of the ICC supported by the author's experience at the Office of the Prosecutor and at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this work assesses the Court through a Hobbesian lens.
Relying on field work in Congo and the Central Africa Republic, more than a hundred interviews and a novel analysis of Hobbes’ Leviathan, this work takes a bottom-up approach, starting from the smallest scale – from what was considered a minor case – and ultimately questioning the institution as a whole.
You can order this book on LGDJ.fr.
