Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor Biographies
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Understanding the Multiplicity of Justice
- 1 Beyond Compliance: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of International Justice
- PART I JUSTICE AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
- 2 Postcolonial Denial: Why the European Court of Human Rights Finds It So Difficult to Acknowledge Racism
- 3 Proleptic Justice: The Threat of Investigation as a Deterrent to Human Rights Abuses in Côte d'Ivoire
- 4 Global Governmentality: The Case of Transnational Adoption
- 5 Implementing the International Criminal Court Treaty in Africa: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations and Government Agencies in Constitutional Reform
- 6 Measuring Justice: Internal Conflict over the World Bank's Empirical Approach to Human Rights
- PART II JUSTICE, POWER, AND NARRATIVES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
- PART III JUSTICE, MEMORY, AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY
- Epilogue: The Words We Use: Justice, Human Rights, and the Sense of Injustice
- Index
- References
3 - Proleptic Justice: The Threat of Investigation as a Deterrent to Human Rights Abuses in Côte d'Ivoire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor Biographies
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Understanding the Multiplicity of Justice
- 1 Beyond Compliance: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of International Justice
- PART I JUSTICE AND THE GEOGRAPHIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
- 2 Postcolonial Denial: Why the European Court of Human Rights Finds It So Difficult to Acknowledge Racism
- 3 Proleptic Justice: The Threat of Investigation as a Deterrent to Human Rights Abuses in Côte d'Ivoire
- 4 Global Governmentality: The Case of Transnational Adoption
- 5 Implementing the International Criminal Court Treaty in Africa: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations and Government Agencies in Constitutional Reform
- 6 Measuring Justice: Internal Conflict over the World Bank's Empirical Approach to Human Rights
- PART II JUSTICE, POWER, AND NARRATIVES OF EVERYDAY LIFE
- PART III JUSTICE, MEMORY, AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY
- Epilogue: The Words We Use: Justice, Human Rights, and the Sense of Injustice
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION: JUSTICE, PATERNALISM, AND LEGITIMACY
In Côte d'Ivoire, between 2002 and 2006, diplomats and international jurists tried to use the threat of international prosecution in a politically instrumental manner. Attempts to lessen the abuse of civilians were at least partially successful. Although it is difficult to give a definitive explanation for such success, I argue in this essay that the main causes can be located in Ivorian conceptions of justice and their ability to influence political actors' behavior, rather than the external threats brought to bear on those same actors. This is not to say that external and internal logics have not influenced each other, engaging in a kind of lengthy conversation. The commitment of Ivorians on both sides of the civil conflict to see themselves and be seen as legitimate political actors has helped to condition the forms of violence that have emerged in the Ivorian conflict at the same time that they have added to the efficacy of the threat of international prosecution for war crimes/crimes against humanity. The fact that blame for war crimes or atrocities could serve as one means of stripping political actors of local legitimacy increased the leverage such threats enjoyed, which raises the question of whether levels of violence might have been self-regulating even without external intervention.
From 1960 to 1985, Côte d'Ivoire was West Africa's economic Eldorado, rivaled only by Nigeria after it began producing oil.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mirrors of JusticeLaw and Power in the Post-Cold War Era, pp. 67 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
- 1
- Cited by