Between Accountability and Reconciliation: The Making of “the Victim-Centered Approach” at the International Criminal Court

Abstract The International Criminal Court is the first international court to have incorporated the newly recognized right of victims to redress. However, there remains considerable skepticism about how the ICC and, more broadly, international criminal justice serve the purposes of victim redress. This article examines the development of the ICC’s reparations policy from the standpoint of how constitutive rules of international criminal justice have been changed. It illustrates how conflicting views regarding victim reparations have formed different preferences within the institution, even among the judiciary. Unlike existing studies that tend to regard the ICC as a monolithic law enforcement institution, this article demonstrates that the victim-centered approach to reparations at the ICC is a compromise between two models: an accountability model that tries to confine the scope of reparations within the clearly defined liability of the convicted person; and a reconciliation model that aims at reaching a large number of victims to facilitate the rehabilitation of the community. The finding has two implications. First, although the study reveals severe tensions between individual accountability and social reconciliation, the tensions can be reconciled through creative judgments. Second, related to the first implication, the ICC is not just a law enforcement institution, but also a policymaking institution, which has considerable leeway in designing reparations policy.