Calls for Accountability in Israel/Palestine: Human Rights Actors and the ICC

• In Event: Gender Dynamics and Rights Issues

Abstract

Literature on the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other mechanisms for the punishment of violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) frequently point to the importance of the role of the international community. Transnational activists have long played a significant role in advocacy for institutional change in the creation, expansion, and implementation of humanitarian and human rights law. NGOs, activist networks, and individuals select issues of importance, such as wartime rape, as well as call upon international organizations and states to change practices and policies. This paper is an exploration of how this activism plays out at the trial level at the ICC. I gather data from human rights actors’ websites, social media mentions, and news media mentions to determine how they engage in monitoring the ICC’s record of justice for grave breaches of humanitarian law using discourse analysis. Here I am interested in calls for accountability for sexual and gender-based crimes committed in the context of the Hamas-Israel War beginning on October 7, 2023

Author

• Anna Telise Hutcheson, Kent State University