Books by Patryk I Labuda
Oxford University Press, 2023
**** Winner of the International Law Association American Branch 2024 'Best Book of the Year for ... more **** Winner of the International Law Association American Branch 2024 'Best Book of the Year for First-Time Author' Prize
In the 1990s, the promise of justice for atrocity crimes was associated with the revival of international criminal tribunals. More recently, however, there has been a renewed emphasis on domestic accountability for international crimes across the globe. In identifying a 'complementarity turn', a paradigm shift toward domestic accountability in the field of international criminal justice, this book investigates how the shadow of international criminal tribunals influences the treatment of serious crimes at the national level.
Drawing on research in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, this book develops a tripartite framework to analyse how states and tribunals work with, despite, or against one another in the fight against impunity. While international prosecutors and judges use the principle of complementarity to foster cooperation and decrease tension with government actors, Patryk Labuda argues that too much deference by tribunals toward states reduces the likelihood of accountability and may enable national elites to consolidate authoritarian power.
By interrogating how international accountability stakeholders relate to their domestic counterparts, International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability advocates improvements to tribunals' institutional design and more dynamic interactions with states to strengthen the enforcement of international criminal law.
International Peace Institute, 2020
Contemporary UN peace operations are expected to implement ambitious protection of civilians (POC... more Contemporary UN peace operations are expected to implement ambitious protection of civilians (POC) mandates while helping host states to prevent conflict and build peace. Reconciling people-oriented POC mandates and the state-centric logic of UN-mandated interventions ranks among the greatest challenges facing peace operations today. This report explores how peace operations implement POC mandates when working with, despite, or against the host state. It analyzes the opportunities, challenges, and risks that arise when peacekeepers work with host states and identifies best practices for leveraging UN support to national authorities. The report shows that peacekeeping personnel in each mission need to decide how to make the most of the UN’s strengths, mitigate risks to civilians, and maintain the support of government partners for mutually desirable POC goals. It offers seven recommendations for managing POC and host-state support going forward
Journal Articles by Patryk I Labuda
International Community Law Review, 2026
This editorial introduces a new research agenda provisionally called 'Second World Approaches to ... more This editorial introduces a new research agenda provisionally called 'Second World Approaches to International Law' (SWAIL). Drawing on Borges's parable of an impossible map that coincides with empire, we treat conceptual 'mapping' as a condition of knowledge: to render a complex world communicable, international law compresses diversity into concepts and binaries that stabilise meaning while thinning what they cannot carry. Because such compression is selective, questions of epistemic governance become unavoidable: what is rendered visible, sayable, and researchable shapes what is flattened, occluded, or treated as peripheral. Read in light of the sharpening of geopolitical and disciplinary fault-lines in international law, SWAIL is framed neither as anti-cosmopolitan regionalism nor as a bid for universalism, but rather as an analytical, diagnostic, and dialogical project that unveils and problematizes liminality, dual exclusion, and the conditions of recognition within international legal argument. After identifying East(-Central) Europe as an 'in-between' space in international law, the articles collected in this symposium pursue that reorientation in a wider cross-regional register, with an eye to dialogue, building bridges and, potentially, a fusion of horizons in international law.
Український час опис міжнародного права / Ukrainian Journal of International Law, 2025
This conversation sets out the ideas behind a new research project called ‘Second World Approache... more This conversation sets out the ideas behind a new research project called ‘Second World Approaches to International Law’. It explains the intellectual origins and geopolitical stimuli of a conference in Vienna in 2025 that explored the common frames and trajectories of international law scholars connected to Eastern Europe. The two co-organizers discuss with two attendees themes like the marginalization of Eastern European voices in mainstream and critical debates on international law, the relationship of Second World Approaches to other disciplinary movements, and the possibilities and risks associated with centering Eastern European perspectives on international law.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2025
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has revealed contested memories of
oppression in different par... more Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has revealed contested memories of
oppression in different parts of the world. Drawing on debates before
several multilateral institutions, this article argues that different
interpretations of five key historical events and processes – the Second
World War, Cold War, colonialism, imperialism and genocide – have
shaped inconsistent normative responses to the Russia-Ukraine war.
While most governments embrace Ukraine-centric narratives about the
Second World War and reject Russia’s attempts to analogize its invasion
to the Soviet Union’s liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany, there is
unease among non-Western states about the Russia-Ukraine war turning
into another prolonged ‘Cold War’ between rival camps. At the same
time, various actors from Europe, the West and South have increasingly used the vocabulary of imperialism, colonialism and genocide to make sense of Russia’s actions. Nevertheless, some non-Western states are reluctant to facilitate reparations,
sanctions and trials against Russia due partly to competing memories of
injustice that have not, on their view, been adequately addressed by
international institutions. Ultimately, while contested global memories have
shaped states’ stances on norms of non-intervention, human rights and
accountability, they do not map neatly onto binary ‘Global South
versus North/West’ or ‘West versus Rest’ divisions of the world,
underscoring the need for further research into the interplay of memory,
norms and politics.
Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2025
In the long term, the Special Criminal Court is a stabilizing factor because it aims to break the... more In the long term, the Special Criminal Court is a stabilizing factor because it aims to break the cycle of violence' An Interview with Patience Guerengbo The Special Criminal Court (SCC) in the Central African Republic (CAR) is a unique institution whose creation, operation and jurisprudence raise critical and thought-provoking questions, yet paradoxically it has garnered relatively little academic attention. This gap in scholarly inquiry prompted our symposium, which assesses the SCC's achievements and ongoing challenges at a crucial juncture, with far-reaching implications for both transitional justice in CAR and the broader landscape of international criminal law. In the spirit of constructive debate, we invited key SCC stakeholders, alongside respected academics and specialists in transitional justice, to offer us their thoughts on the Court. From Bangui, on 27 September 2024, Patience Guerengbo, for many years a magistrate in CAR and currently President of the SCC Investigative Chamber, 1 joined the co-convenors of the symposium, Patryk Labuda and J� erôme de Hemptinne, for an interview to share his views on the challenges of conducting investigations in CAR's volatile context. The interview was conducted in French and has been translated into English by the co-convenors.
Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2025
As the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces mounting pressure and scepticism from states, loc... more As the International Criminal Court (ICC) faces mounting pressure and scepticism from states, localized justice mechanisms are playing an increasingly vital role in ensuring accountability for mass crimes. While often less visible on the global stage, these mechanisms are crucial in areas where the ICC's reach is limited and may serve as complementary instruments of justice. One notable example is the Special Criminal Court (SCC) in the Central African Republic (CAR), a hybrid tribunal established to address serious crimes committed during the country's prolonged turmoil. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the law that mandated the SCC's creation, offering an opportune moment to take stock of its progress and reflect on the prospects of hybrid mechanisms elsewhere.
Yale Journal of International Law, 2024
*** Winner of the American Society of International Law 2025 'International Criminal Law Scholars... more *** Winner of the American Society of International Law 2025 'International Criminal Law Scholarship Prize' for best article
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been widely condemned, but a proposed special tribunal for the crime of aggression has received mixed reactions. Eastern European states support aggression prosecutions of the Russian leadership, Western powers are cautious, and the non-Western world seems concerned about double standards in the enforcement of international criminal law. In assessing the arguments for and against a special tribunal from a post-colonial, Eastern European perspective, this Article foregrounds Ukraine’s history of foreign subjugation to illuminate the counter-hegemonic potential of aggression prosecutions and argues that Russia’s “de-Nazification” rhetoric speaks in favor of a reckoning with Nuremberg’s distorted legacy and neo-imperial phantasies of a Russkiy mir. The Article nuances critiques of selectivity that overlook Ukraine’s liminal place in the global order as a post-colonial state straddling boundaries between North and South, East and West, Europe and Asia. By emphasizing small and weak states’ advocacy for the criminalization of aggression, it suggests that the special tribunal may provide inspiration for anti-imperial and counter-hegemonic struggles in other parts of the world while decolonizing myths about the Soviet Union’s benevolent role in the Second World War and the Cold War. Against the backdrop of the “semi-peripheral” status of the Global East, the Article also considers why Ukraine has embraced international law as an emancipatory tool in its struggle against Russia and how this relates to Eastern European states’ advocacy of an international tribunal over a hybrid tribunal. In conclusion, it discusses why Eastern Europeans should embrace the counter-hegemonic aspirations of other weaker states in the global order.
Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, 2024
This article analyses states’ divergent responses to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and their ... more This article analyses states’ divergent responses to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and their impact on the global legal order. Western states have supported Ukraine by providing military aid, imposing sanctions, and advocating accountability. However, the non-Western world has exhibited ambivalence with many states critiquing Western double standards in violating the prohibition of force, emphasizing sanctions’ negative effects on poorer nations, and advocating reform of multilateral institutions. Moving beyond three narratives about post-2022 developments – the idea of a Zeitenwende, the end of Western hegemony and the rise of the Global South, and a contest of democracies versus autocracies – this article argues that the Russo-Ukrainian war has amplified contestation over international law’s universality, yet there is more continuity than rupture in states’ normative positions in core areas of international law. Rather than a Zeitenwende in international law, which may in fact be a Eurocentric framing of post-2022 developments, the Russo-Ukrainian war has accelerated shifts underway prior to the 2022 invasion. The invasion has put the spotlight on divergent regional interpretations of international law, but claims of emerging multipolarity in international law flatten the complexities of individual states’ normative positions, which mix legal principle, economic self-interest, historical precedent and shifting political alliances. A more regionalized approach may be emerging in areas like international criminal law, but perceptions of fragmentation and rhetorical denunciations of double standards should not be prematurely conflated with multipolarity in international law, understood as an alternative normative ordering centred around regional hegemons like China, Turkey or India.
Leiden Journal of International Law, 2023
Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the debate over international criminal ... more Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the debate over international criminal law's selectivity. While many have welcomed the renewed interest in accountability for international crimes in the wake of the 'Ukraine moment', others have emphasized double standards in the enforcement of international criminal law, including a lack of accountability for Western violations and disproportionate attention to European victims. This article interrogates the master narratives about international criminal law's post-Ukraine selectivity and complicates accusations of bias by emphasizing Ukraine's liminal status in the global order and the cross-border nature of aggression as an explanatory factor for differentiated responses from states. It suggests that concerns about an invidious 'Ukraine effect' on international criminal law enforcement are less persuasive after the International Criminal Court's decade-long conflict with the African Union, and that a decentring of investigations to Eurasia should be construed not only as a moment of soul-searching but also as a welcome opportunity to rebalance the scales of justice. The article encourages international criminal law stakeholders to move beyond critique that unwittingly essentializes Eurocentric assumptions and to devise a more compelling vision of global criminal law enforcement that challenges crimes and inequalities both between and within states.
Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 2022
The UN Security Council now regularly deploys peacekeeping missions with robust mandates to prote... more The UN Security Council now regularly deploys peacekeeping missions with robust mandates to protect civilians and encourages their proactive implementation, including by using force. While this turn to robust civilian protection is usually celebrated, the legal parameters of using force are rarely scrutinised, with scholars usually focusing narrowly on self-defence and UN policy to justify mandate implementation. By analysing the relationship between peacekeeping mandates and international law in light of the shift from defensive to proactive peacekeeping, this article argues that the legality of using force for civilian protection purposes must be reconciled not only with authorisations to use force in Security Council resolutions but also with human rights law, which imposes temporal conditions for lawful deprivations of the right to life outside the conduct of hostilities. Drawing on the UN’s current practice of protecting civilians in hostile environments, this article attempts to reconcile proactive civilian-oriented peacekeeping with the concept of imminence as understood in human rights law.
Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, 2020
Contemporary UN peacekeeping missions often have Chapter VII mandates and wide authorizations to ... more Contemporary UN peacekeeping missions often have Chapter VII mandates and wide authorizations to use force, notably to protect civilians. Since 2010, however, the Security Council has created a new generation of stabilization missions to support host governments. Peacekeepers in these missions are expected not only to protect civilians but also to combat armed groups, sometimes jointly with state security forces. While this may seem like just the next step in the UN’s gradual drift from traditional to robust peacekeeping, this article argues that stabilization constitutes a more radical departure from conventional doctrines on the use of force by peacekeepers. In fact, stabilization should be understood as a distinct form of UN-mandated intervention by invitation.
European Journal of International Law, 2020
2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and of the establishment of the ... more 2019 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and of the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). After prosecuting seventy-three people, including high-ranking politicians and military leaders, the Rwanda Tribunal closed its doors in 2015. Together with its sister tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTR is considered one of the first generation ad hoc tribunals mandated to bring justice to countries emerging from conflict. This review essay examines four books to take stock of the scholarly debate on the ICTR's performance. After analyzing the Tribunal's achievements and shortcomings, it explains that scholarly assessments of the ICTR rely on two different analytical lenses-a national or international perspective-to make claims about the roles of international criminal tribunals generally. The essay then discusses the ICTR's interactions with other post-genocide justice mechanisms in Rwanda and the compatibility of concurrent judicial responses to mass violence. It concludes by noting that interpretations of the ICTR's performance continue to evolve, reflecting prevailing ideas about the goals and limitations of international criminal tribunals within the field of transitional justice.
Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2019
A variety of human rights dilemmas were left unresolved in Rome. Under complementarity, the Inter... more A variety of human rights dilemmas were left unresolved in Rome. Under complementarity, the International Criminal Court (ICC) must defer to domestic proceedings if a state is handling the same case and the national authorities are not ‘unable or unwilling’ to prosecute the same person. Much ink has been spilt on Article 17 of the Rome Statute and the resulting case law; however, less understood is the flipside of complementarity: under what circumstances is a state not allowed to prosecute defendants over whom the ICC has already exercised jurisdiction? Against the backdrop of the ICC’s trial of Germain Katanga, the article examines the prohibition of ne bis in idem, its relationship to complementarity, and the relevance of fair trial guarantees in the Rome Statute. This topic is likely to generate further controversy as the likelihood of secondary domestic trials against ICC defendants increases, as seen in the cases of Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Jean-Pierre Bemba.
American Society of International Law (ASIL) Insights, 2018
Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2017
The Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic can be viewed in two ways. The optimis... more The Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic can be viewed in two ways. The optimistic view is that it is a vindication of the idea that the international community should complement the efforts of states in the fight against impunity. The pessimistic view is that its establishment represents the International Criminal Court’s failure to catalyze accountability at the national level. Against the backdrop of these two opposing narratives, this article examines the main legal features of this new ‘hybrid’ court and its relationship to the principle of complementarity enshrined in the ICC Statute. It addresses the following questions: the hybrid court’s legal basis under Central African law, its jurisdictional mandate, the mixed composition of its staff, immunities and amnesties, and the Special Criminal Court’s concurrent jurisdiction with the International Criminal Court. The article suggests that, although it is a promising example of international-national cooperation, the Special Criminal Court calls into question legal and systemic assumptions underpinning complementarity, the principle that gives states priority in prosecuting international crimes, which in turn raises questions about the relevance of complementarity in analogous conflict and post-conflict situations.
African Yearbook of International Law 2013-2014, 2016
Book Chapters by Patryk I Labuda
Takao SUAMI, Keisuke KONDO and Kaoru OBATA (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Global Crisis and Global Legal Ordering, Cambridge University Press, 2026
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has often been called a turning point for the glo... more Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has often been called a turning point for the global legal order. 1 Western and European states have provided military aid to the Ukrainian government, granted protection to fleeing Ukrainians, imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia, and advocated accountability for violations of international law. 2 Meanwhile, the non-Western world has taken a more ambiguous stance, with many states critiquing Western double standards in using transboundary force, the negative effects of unilateral sanctions, and the selectivity of accountability initiatives. While governments like China or India have critiqued Russia's nuclear sabre-rattling, the Russia-Ukraine war has amplified different perceptions of the invasion and how international stakeholders understand their responsibilities in encouraging peace. Coming on the heels of the 2022 invasion, the post-October 2023 war in Gaza has amplified global contestation, with many 'Global South' actors criticizing Western states, especially the United States, for its double standards in upholding international law. Against the backdrop of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, this article examines how states' uneven normative responses present a challenge to the existing global legal order, often characterized as 'liberal' or 'rules-based', and whether an alternative multipolar -more regional and security-based -normative order may be emerging around new actors like Russia, China or the BRICS. 3 Drawing on evidence from the jus ad bellum, international criminal law, and international trade law, we argue that there is much continuity in states' normative positions, but that the two wars have accelerated shifts previously underway, contributing to a perception of growing fragmentation as more states and regional actors affirmatively assert 1 The German chancellor initially used the term 'Zeitenwende' to describe an imminent transformation in domestic politics, later broadened to Europe and eventually globally. Olaf Scholz, 'The global Zeitenwende. how to avoid a new Cold War in a multipolar era ', Foreign Affairs (2022), available at foreignaffairs.com/germany/olaf-scholzglobal-zeitenwende-how-avoid-new-cold-war. 2 This chapter uses 'West' to describe Europe, North America and Australasia. Like the contested term 'Global South', used in this article, 'West' does not account for semi-peripheral regions like Eastern Europe, which remains a regional group at the UN. See Tobias Berger, 'The 'Global South' as a relational category -global hierarchies in the production of law and legal pluralism' (2021) 42
Kirsten Ainley and Mark Kersten (eds), Hybrid Justice: Innovation and Impact in the Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes, Oxford University Press, 2025
Hybrid tribunals usually operate alongside other judicial and non-judicial bodies with similar ac... more Hybrid tribunals usually operate alongside other judicial and non-judicial bodies with similar accountability functions. In particular, a hybrid tribunal can share jurisdictional powers with (ordinary) national courts, one or more international (criminal) tribunal(s), a truth commission, or other investigative and prosecutorial bodies. When the mandates of different institutions overlap, there is a need to identify and regulate relations between them. Ideally, legal rules embedded within each institution’s mandate minimize a duplication of tasks, prevent unnecessary conflict, encourage cooperation, and maximize cross-fertilization. This chapter argues that the term ‘complementarity’, which is often invoked to describe questions of institutional design, is an unhelpful way of conceptualizing relations between hybrid tribunals and other judicial and non-judicial institutions. Drawing on examples from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, it explains why the International Criminal Court’s jurisdictional framework generates confusion and uncertainty over who enjoys priority and who has decision-making power. Other concepts and rules, for instance primacy, deferral, and subsidiarity, delineate the powers and functions of different institutions more clearly, generating healthier interactions between different transitional justice mechanisms in the long run.
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Books by Patryk I Labuda
In the 1990s, the promise of justice for atrocity crimes was associated with the revival of international criminal tribunals. More recently, however, there has been a renewed emphasis on domestic accountability for international crimes across the globe. In identifying a 'complementarity turn', a paradigm shift toward domestic accountability in the field of international criminal justice, this book investigates how the shadow of international criminal tribunals influences the treatment of serious crimes at the national level.
Drawing on research in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone, this book develops a tripartite framework to analyse how states and tribunals work with, despite, or against one another in the fight against impunity. While international prosecutors and judges use the principle of complementarity to foster cooperation and decrease tension with government actors, Patryk Labuda argues that too much deference by tribunals toward states reduces the likelihood of accountability and may enable national elites to consolidate authoritarian power.
By interrogating how international accountability stakeholders relate to their domestic counterparts, International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability advocates improvements to tribunals' institutional design and more dynamic interactions with states to strengthen the enforcement of international criminal law.
Journal Articles by Patryk I Labuda
oppression in different parts of the world. Drawing on debates before
several multilateral institutions, this article argues that different
interpretations of five key historical events and processes – the Second
World War, Cold War, colonialism, imperialism and genocide – have
shaped inconsistent normative responses to the Russia-Ukraine war.
While most governments embrace Ukraine-centric narratives about the
Second World War and reject Russia’s attempts to analogize its invasion
to the Soviet Union’s liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany, there is
unease among non-Western states about the Russia-Ukraine war turning
into another prolonged ‘Cold War’ between rival camps. At the same
time, various actors from Europe, the West and South have increasingly used the vocabulary of imperialism, colonialism and genocide to make sense of Russia’s actions. Nevertheless, some non-Western states are reluctant to facilitate reparations,
sanctions and trials against Russia due partly to competing memories of
injustice that have not, on their view, been adequately addressed by
international institutions. Ultimately, while contested global memories have
shaped states’ stances on norms of non-intervention, human rights and
accountability, they do not map neatly onto binary ‘Global South
versus North/West’ or ‘West versus Rest’ divisions of the world,
underscoring the need for further research into the interplay of memory,
norms and politics.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been widely condemned, but a proposed special tribunal for the crime of aggression has received mixed reactions. Eastern European states support aggression prosecutions of the Russian leadership, Western powers are cautious, and the non-Western world seems concerned about double standards in the enforcement of international criminal law. In assessing the arguments for and against a special tribunal from a post-colonial, Eastern European perspective, this Article foregrounds Ukraine’s history of foreign subjugation to illuminate the counter-hegemonic potential of aggression prosecutions and argues that Russia’s “de-Nazification” rhetoric speaks in favor of a reckoning with Nuremberg’s distorted legacy and neo-imperial phantasies of a Russkiy mir. The Article nuances critiques of selectivity that overlook Ukraine’s liminal place in the global order as a post-colonial state straddling boundaries between North and South, East and West, Europe and Asia. By emphasizing small and weak states’ advocacy for the criminalization of aggression, it suggests that the special tribunal may provide inspiration for anti-imperial and counter-hegemonic struggles in other parts of the world while decolonizing myths about the Soviet Union’s benevolent role in the Second World War and the Cold War. Against the backdrop of the “semi-peripheral” status of the Global East, the Article also considers why Ukraine has embraced international law as an emancipatory tool in its struggle against Russia and how this relates to Eastern European states’ advocacy of an international tribunal over a hybrid tribunal. In conclusion, it discusses why Eastern Europeans should embrace the counter-hegemonic aspirations of other weaker states in the global order.
Book Chapters by Patryk I Labuda