On 3 March 2015, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) rendered its judgment on the principles and procedures of reparation. The judgment is of systemic significance for international criminal justice, since it establishes a liability regime for reparations that is grounded in the principle of accountability of the convicted person towards victims and the nexus between individual criminal responsibility and the obligation to repair harm. This new ‘principle of liability to remedy harm’ complements the punitive dimensions of ICC justice (e.g. conviction, sentence). It differs from purely civil forms of liability due to its connection to criminal proceedings which requires reconciliation of different interests, namely ‘the rights of victims and the convicted person’. This contribution analyses the merits and risks of the approach taken by the ICC Appeals Chamber. It argues that the judgment marks significant progress over the Trial Chamber decisions, since it increases the expressivist potential of reparations and the prospects of participatory justice. But it also highlights existing tensions in the decision, such as its limited attention to societal frictions created through reparations, and its minimalist approach to non-accountability-related objectives of reparation.
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Carsten Stahn (2015) studied this question.