ABSTRACT
This conceptual chapter unpacks key notions of the ‘international’, ‘(in)justice’ and the ‘criminal’ in international criminal justice from two perspectives, a Euro-North American-centric one and a decolonial one. The ‘international’ is a creation of colonialism, which was inaugurated when the nation-state was created as an accompaniment to the genocides of the Reconquista. (In)justice is conceptualised as a product of the creation of colonies which were managed through violence (institutive, maintenance, normalisation and routinisation), while those at home were ruled through civilised rules, laws and regulations. The chapter explains why the definition of an international criminal does not fully explain why some who commit similar or worse atrocities are never punished. What constitutes an ‘international criminal’ according to the world-system-based international criminal justice system is not a legal matter but a political and historical one. Methodically, the chapter deploys a form of decolonial historical deconstruction of the international criminal justice system tracing it through the following world orders: (1) Reconquista 1492 world order, (2) Westphalia 1648 world order, (3) 1918 World War 1 world order, (4) 1945 World War 2 world order, (5) 1989 post-cold war world order and (6) post-2001 9/11 world order.
