Civil Society’s Endgame

This article seeks to examine the contributions of civil society to modern peoples’ tribunals, the extent to which adherence to ‘legal’ processes serves the victims of serious human rights violations, and how these efforts have interacted with ‘formal’ legal spaces. While recognizing that every situation responds to and raises distinct and complex issues and needs, a look at the history, contexts, and development of civil society-led accountability efforts illuminates their contributions to stemming the impunity gulf of today’s ‘formal’ accountability architecture. The article specifically examines the Uyghur Tribunal and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Inquiries as examples of recent civil society-led tribunals, considering the modalities and contexts of their establishment, the evidential contributions of civil society, the legal attitudes assumed by the tribunals, and — to the extent possible — their impact on ‘formal’ accountability spaces. In so doing, it aims to highlight identifiable features of these recent ‘informal’ tribunals to encourage a discussion of the opportunities and challenges that might be encountered in future civil society-led accountability efforts. Notwithstanding the structured gaze of legal categorizations and its modulation of victims’ voices and witnesses’ experiences, this article suggests that close adherence to formal legal standards and procedures may serve to optimize the opportunity to secure, test, and enhance the evidential value of the material arduously collected by civil society, and thus best serve the interests of victims and survivors of violations of international law.