ABSTRACT
This book has provided an introduction to the intersection of two complex and rapidly developing and compound fields of study and policymaking: human rights and international criminal law; and conflict resolution and peacebuilding. It has offered an overview of relevant international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and presented scholarship and debates about human rights and the causes and consequences of conflict, options for conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and options for seeking accountability for past atrocities. There are many tensions between the promotion of human rights and the resolution of conflict, but there may also be opportunities for engaging in each in a more complementary fashion. This book has sought to assist students seeking to work in this hybrid area with these analytic tools, as well as with the study of contemporary situations presenting challenges of protecting human rights while addressing conflict. These situations range from largely internal armed conflicts to those with regional or international dimensions such as those in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and involve a mix of state combatants and nonstate combatants, as well as an increasing range of civilian nonstate actors who may support combat or even engage in it while not being official parties to the conflict, and nonstate actors such as corporations who may operate in conflict zones and even be complicit in serious crimes. Finally, the book has presented a range of critical mechanisms and institutions developed as part of efforts to implement human rights and humanitarian law, generally through criminal accountability, even as conflicts have raged: ad hoc tribunals, transnational mechanisms, hybrid tribunals, and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
