Historic Monuments and Religious Buildings as Victims in Prosecutor v Al Mahdi at the International Criminal Court

In this article, we combine anthropological and legal approaches to interrogate the position and status of “victims” during Prosecutor v Al Mahdi at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Anthropological work on ontology and distributed agency provides a potential model for a broader reading of the category of victim. We then consider the war crime committed and propose an adapted application of international law sources on victimhood in order to develop a new legal-doctrinal approach that considers material objects and heritage as “direct victims” of violence and expands the range of possible “secondary victims” in ICC proceedings.